f  of  California 
rn  Regional 
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Dome  de  Thutitut 


Pages  from 

"The  Book  of  Paris 


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Aux  Ambassadeurs 


Pages  from 
The  Book  of  Paris 

By 

Claude  C.  Washburn 


Etchings  and  drawings  by 
Lester  G.  Hornby 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

(€bc  Ritocwbe  prcstf  Cambti&oe 

1910 


COPYRIGHT,   igiO,    BY   CLAUDE   C.  WASHBURN  AND   LESTER  G.   HORNBY 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


Published  October  igio 


L)  £7 


p 


Contents 


The  Book  of  Paris 

i 

Sidewalk  Cafes 

9 

I  Choose  my  Home 

35 

Two  Plays 

99 

Au  Bois 

123 

Love  in  Paris 

157 

In  my  Court 

191 

Pere  Lachaise  —  An  Impression 

219 

An  Interview 

247 

6S8fi67 


Dans  le  Jardin  du  Luxembourg 


Illustrations 


Illustrations 


Dome  de  l'lnstitut 

Half-title 

Aux  Ambassadeurs 

Frontispiece 

Dans  le  Jardin  du  Luxembourg 

V 

In  Montmartre 

i 

In  the  Luxembourg  Gardens 

4 

Sidewalk  Cafes 

7 

Cafe  du  Rond  Point 

18 

Proprietor  of  a  Little  Shop 

24 

Along  the  Quay 

33 

Street  Vendors 

36 

The  Seine  at  Notre  Dame 

40 

A  Parisienne 

50 

A  Little  Street  near  Boulevard  St.  Germain 

60 

Au  "  Rat  Mort  " 

64 

On  He  de  la  Cite 

68 

[vii] 


Illustrations 

Old  Passage,  Palais  Royal  78 

Court  of  the  Louvre  82 

In  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain  86 

At  La  Gaite  97 

Entrance  to  a  "  Bal "  100 

Street  of  the  Little  Butcher  Shop  no 

A  Cocotte  121 

In  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  124 


At  the  Chateau  de  Madrid 


Cochers 


134 


An  Old  Habitue  142 


150 


Fiacres  155 

La  Lettre  d' Amour  160 

Le  Modele  j68 

Cafe  in  the  Bois  180 

Linette  ^8 

Towers  of  St.  Sulpice  189 

In  the  Garden  of  the  Luxembourg  192 

[  viii  ] 


Illustrations 

Old  Court  in  Rue  Vercingetorix  200 

St.  Etienne  du  Mont  217 

Small  Shops,  Rue  de  Rennes  222 

On  Boulevard  Montparnasse  242 

On  the  Boulevard  245 

Little  Balconies  248 

In  the  Quartier  du  Pantheon  252 

Passage  des  Patriarches  —  Rue  Mouffetard  262 

On  Boulevard  Sebastopol  274 

Cafes  278 


In  Montmartre 


The  Book  of  Paris 


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The  Book  of  Paris 

HERE  are  two  classes  of  people 
who  come  to  Paris,  —  those  to 
whom,  though  they  may  be  fa- 
miliar with  every  monument, 
have  wandered  in  every  quartiery  have  crossed 
the  Place  de  la  Concorde  daily  for  twenty 
years,  Paris  never  means  more  than  the  sum 
of  its  thousand  interests;  and  those  who  feel 
within  themselves  the  overpowering,  con- 
stantly increasing  sense  of  the  great  city's 
personality.  To  the  former  Paris  gives  no 
heed,  but  in  the  hearts  of  the  latter  she  is 
always  writing  her  book.  It  is  a  book  of  in- 
finite variety,  exalted  and  prophetic,  deli- 
cately fanciful  and  gay,  sombre  with  the 
misery  of  existence,  according  to  the  mate- 
rials on  which  it  is  written;  but  it  is  always 

[3  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

significant,  never  petty.  When  it  is  finished, 
it  will  hold  the  story  of  the  human  soul; 
but  it  will  never  be  finished. 

Paris  is  not  the  subject  of  the  book:  Paris 
is  only  the  medium.  It  is  in  her  style,  since 
it  is  she  who  writes;  but  its  subject  is  Life, 
and  whatever,  good  or  bad,  has  any  bearing 
upon  life  is  to  be  found  somewhere  in  its 
pages,  without  embellishment  and  without 
euphemism.  Nothing  is  disguised,  nothing 
falsified ;  for  Paris  herself  is  inscrutable,  set- 
ting down  with  purposeless  impartiality  all 
that  touches  her  subject.  A  universal  reader 
for  the  book,  if  such  were  to  be  found,  would 
need,  I  think,  to  be  part  god,  part  demon ; 
for  no  one  man  could  rise  high  enough  to 
grasp  half  its  noble  beauty,  and  none  surely 
be  found  base  enough  to  comprehend  all  its 
black  ugliness. 

I,  too,  wandering  along  the  boulevards, 
musing  in  the  Luxembourg  Gardens,  or 
watching  at  night  from  the  bridges  the  red 
and  yellow  lights  swirling  in  the  black  river, 

[4] 


In  the  Luxembourg  Gardens 


% 


- 


The  Book  of  Paris 

have  felt  repeatedly  the  strange  thrill  of  com- 
prehension, and  have  known  that  in  me  also 
some  pages  were  being  added  to  the  Book 
of  Paris,  —  confused,  it  was  true,  often  inco- 
herent, and  never  of  the  greatest,  but  of  the 
book,  nevertheless.  Such  as  they  were,  I  have 
tried  here  to  transcribe  them  for  you.  The 
task  was  not  easy.  It  has  been  as  though  I 
were  translating  painfully  from  one  language 
into  another.  Rigid,  sharp -edged  words, 
made  for  the  expression  of  definite  logical 
thought,  were  hard  moulds  into  which  to 
pour  the  fragments  of  ideas  and  the  shifting, 
inconsequential  moods  that  Paris  gave  me. 
Something,  however,  of  the  original  always 
shines  through  even  the  worst  translation, 
and  for  the  substance  of  the  rambling  es- 
says that  follow  I  make  no  apology.  If  the 
thoughts  and  the  feelings  with  which  Paris 
filled  me  were  indeed,  as  I  truly  think  them, 
pages  from  the  book  of  herself,  then,  how- 
ever minor,  they  cannot  but  have  some  worth. 


Sidewalk  Cafes 


Sidewalk  Cafes 


II 


\i 


Sidewalk   Cafes 

NEVER  have  been  able  to  ap- 
preciate London.  It  is  not  that 
I  am  unmoved  by  its  monu- 
S^SEaSlK^  ments,  that  I  do  not  feel  a  rev- 
erent awe  before  the  Abbey,  that  the  Tem- 
ple leaves  me  cold;  or  that  to  watch  the 
great  murky  Thames  flowing  beneath  the 
Tower  Bridge  at  sunset  does  not  stir  me 
strangely;  but  simply  that  the  spirit  of  the 
whole  place  remains  aloof  from  me,  outside 
my  comprehension,  like  the  mood  of  a  poem 
in  a  foreign  language  with  which  I  am  un- 
familiar, or  which  I  can  but  spell  out  halt- 
ingly. Often,  in  gazing  down  from  the  top 
of  an  omnibus  on  the  rush  of  the  throng  in  a 
crowded  gray-walled  street,  I  have  felt,  with 
the  swift,  poignant  sensation  that  one  has  in 

[  9l 


The  Book  of  Paris 

searching  his  mind  for  a  forgotten  name, 
that  I  was  upon  the  point  of  understanding, 
that  at  last  the  whole  huge  city  was  about  to 
assume  an  entity  for  me;  when  suddenly  we 
would  pass,  almost  within  arm's  reach,  an 
insistent  London  statue,  and  I  would  find 
myself  plunged  into  the  deadening  and  over- 
whelming sense  of  the  commonplaceness 
of  all  things, —  myself  included, —  and  the 
gleam  would  be  gone.  For  the  greatest  harm 
in  ugliness  is  not  the  sharp,  quickly-passed 
pain  which  it  inflicts,  but  the  more  enduring 
numbness  and  stupor  it  imparts  to  our  minds. 
It  seems  to  me  now,  in  reviewing  these  oc- 
currences, that  each  time  it  was  the  statue 
of  Queen  Victoria  that  so  depressed  me;  but 
this  is  probably  a  delusion,  due  to  the  fact 
that  nearly  all  London  statues  resemble  that 
kindly  monarch.  Yet  it  is  less  the  ugliness 
of  London  which  prevents  one's  understand- 
ing it,  than  the  fact  that  one  is  always  part 
and  parcel  of  it.  Fight  as  one  may  to  pre- 
serve his  own  personality,  he  feels  it  slipping 

[  io  ] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 

from  him,  and  himself  but  an  infinitely- 
unimportant  fragment  of  the  mass.  Only  a 
collective  existence  is  possible.  One  cannot 
study  these  millions  of  which  one  is  part; 
one  has  no  mental  vantage-ground.  There 
is  no  solitude  possible  in  a  London  throng. 
It  is  the  fierce  hopelessness  of  this  struggle 
to  retain  his  own  identity  that  makes  an  in- 
dividualist so  unhappy  in  London  ;  for  an 
individualist  must  in  the  midst  of  everything 
feel  himself  detached  from  the  rest  of  life, 
and  here  no  detachment  is  possible.  That 
there  should  have  arisen  in  the  press  of  this 
collectivism  men  capable  of  guarding  their 
own  souls,  of  living  in  the  crowd  but  aloof 
from  it,  and  so  framing  for  themselves  a 
conception  of  life  out  of  this  relentless  over- 
bearing unity,  appears  to  me  a  miracle;  but 
there  have  been  many,  the  splendid  excep- 
tions which  have  made  England's  glory. 
De  Quincey,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Mere- 
dith,—  to  name  only  a  few,  —  all  of  them 
lived  their  own  lives,  and,  reflecting  in  the 

[  ii  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

solitude  of  their  individualism,  found,  each 
according  to  the  measure  of  his  genius,  a 
greater  or  a  lesser  meaning,  a  deeper  or  a 
more  superficial  significance,  in  this  chaos 
that  engulfs  smaller  men. 

In  France  the  individual  is  the  unit ;  but 
in  England  the  unit  is  the  whole.  London 
is  only  England  intensified.  The  individual 
rights  of  which  the  Englishman  is  so  proud 
are  only  material  rights  that  affect  his  bod- 
ily comfort ;  of  genuine  personal  liberty  he 
has  no  conception.  He  may  walk  the  streets 
in  almost  complete  safety  from  physical  at- 
tack ;  but  he  has  thrust  upon  him  from  child- 
hood the  cold  formalism  of  an  established 
religion.  The  precincts  of  his  property  are 
rigorously  protected  against  aggression  ;  but 
socially  he  himself  is  born  into  as  iron-clad 
a  system  of  slavery  as  has  ever  existed.  Rich 
or  poor,  of  high  rank  or  low,  he  is  classified 
at  birth  as  a  member  of  a  caste  in  which 
not  the  individual  but  the  type  is  the  reality. 
A  certain   mode  of  existence,  and  even  a 

[    12    ] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 


certain  sharply  marked-out  attitude  of  mind, 
are  characteristic  of  each  class,  and  this  con- 
ventionalism extends  to  the  most  minute 
trivialities ;  for  nothing  is  trivial  where  no- 
thing is  individual  but  always  a  symbol  of 
the  whole.  Suggest  to  an  Englishman  an  act 
that  would  be  an  infringement,  however 
slight,  on  a  class  to  which  he  does  not  be- 
long :  he  will  not  reply,  "  I  cannot  do  that 
because — ";  but  simply,  "That  is  not 
done."   The  system  is  perfect. 

Nor  does  the  Englishman  want  it  changed. 
I  can  find  no  analogy  for  the  willing  pride 
with  which  he  accepts  his  bondage.  Imagine 
all  the  negroes  of  the  South  rising  as  one 
man  at  the  time  of  the  emancipation,  cry- 
ing, "  We  will  not  be  free,"  and  turning  in 
anger  on  President  Lincoln,  and  you  have 
but  a  feeble  likeness  to  the  attitude  of  the 
English  toward  their  would-be  liberators ; 
for  the  negroes  were  only  stupid  children, 
while  the  English  are  a  race  of  men,  en- 
lightened, "progressive,"  —  whatever  that 

[  i3  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

may  mean,  —  almost  civilized  indeed,  one 
would  say,  if  it  were  not  for  their  deplorable 
lack  of  taste. 

A  refusal  to  acknowledge  any  part  of  the 
system  would  not  entail  loss  of  material  privi- 
leges, —  materially,  and  materially  alone,  the 
Englishman  is  free,  — but  it  would  mean  so- 
cial ostracism,  misunderstanding,  contempt, 

—  all  the  things  which,  as  they  are  the  least 
material,  are  the  hardest  for  the  genuinely 
free  man  to  bear.  The  lives  of  England's 
great  men, —  poets,  novelists,  philosophers, 

—  who  even  in  London  raised  themselves 
above  the  crowd  and  kept  clear  of  the  ma- 
chine, have  not  often  been  easy.  For  they, 
standing  aside  and  observing  the  whole,  saw 
faults  and  pointed  out  wrongs.  In  England 
"  that  is  not  done."  These  men  were  strong 
personalities.  They  achieved  their  individ- 
ualism themselves ;  for  in  England  there  are 
no  aids  to  solitude. 

But  giants  are  rare,  and  for  humbler  indi- 
vidualists a  sojourn  in  London  is  misery,  a 

[  Hi 


Sidewalk  Cafes 

period  of  feeling  his  ideas  effaced,  his  per- 
sonality suspended.  Formerly  I  used  to  force 
myself  to  stay  on,  feeling  that  I  must  not  go 
until  I  had  been  somehow  enabled  to  get 
apart  from  and  understand  the  monster,  but 
my  heroism  never  came  to  anything.  A  day 
always  arrived  when  my  longing  for  France 
grew  too  strong,  and  I  would  take  a  boat  for 
Calais  or  Dieppe.  The  experience  was,  I  dare 
say,  bad  for  my  character ;  for  as  my  virtue 
never  resulted  in  success,  I  at  last  reached  the 
conclusion  that  it  is  not  the  disagreeable  but 
the  pleasant  things  in  life  which  are  good  for 
one,  so  that  now  I  never  do  anything  I  do  not 
care  to  do. 

Any  one  who  has  traveled  much  by  moun- 
tain-railways knows  the  sensation  of  ease  and 
relaxation  one  receives  when,  after  grinding 
painfully  down  a  long  grade,  the  brakes  are 
at  last  released  and  the  train  glides  smoothly 
on.  I  can  find  no  other  simile  to  express  the 
relief  with  which  one  throws  off  the  yoke  of 
London.   I  have  never  crossed  from  England 

[  i5  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

to  France  without  experiencing  this  emo- 
tion, and  I  have  never  arrived  in  Paris  with- 
out a  sense  of  exhilaration  in  which  I  felt  my 
own  personality  rise,  and  assert  itself,  and 
seem  to  me  worth  while.  No  other  city  can 
ever  mean  to  me  what  Paris  means.  As  I  sit 
here  writing,  needing  only  to  lift  my  eyes  to 
the  window  to  see  the  gray  Seine  flowing  be- 
neath and  the  misty  blue-gray  sky  softening 
the  mass  of  houses  beyond  the  river,  I  feel 
a  rush  of  gratitude  for  all  that  Paris  has 
given  me. 

As  a  child,  before  I  had  been  out  of 
America,  it  was  always  Florence  of  which 
I  dreamed ;  and  indeed,  though,  seen,  Flor- 
ence proved  quite  different  from  the  picture 
I  had  made  of  it,  the  realization  was  no  dis- 
appointment. But  in  Florence  one  leads  only 
the  most  perfect  of  existences.  One  is  con- 
tent to  feel :  one  has  no  need  of  thinking. 
In  any  one  not  born  to  it  the  excess  of  beauty 
of  the  Tuscan  city  causes  a  kind  of  intoxica- 
tion that  inhibits  achievement.   One  might 

[  16] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 


become  witty  if  he  lived  long  in  Florence, 

—  most  people  do,  I  believe:  —  Marcel 
Schwob  might  have  written  his  "  Mimes  " 
there  ;  —  but  for  real  achievement  a  state  of 
mental  turmoil  is  necessary,  and  how  is  one 
to  arouse  a  mental  turmoil  before  the  warm 
sun-bathed  splendor  of  these  brown  old  Ital- 
ian palaces,  or  at  Settignano,  where  the 
nightingales  sing  all  night  and  all  day  too, 
and  where  the  cypresses  turn  blue-black  in 
the  moonlight? 

But  in  Paris  one  lives,  —  so  fully,  and  richly, 
and  tumultuously,  that  I  wonder  sometimes 
whether  one  is  not  living  his  life  too  fast,  like 
a  mouse  under  oxygen,  and  whether  one  will 
not  die  at  thirty.  One's  mind  seethes.  One 
is  overwhelmed  with  ideas.    Little  or  great, 

—  what  does  i t  matter  ?  What  matters  is  that 
here  whoever  comes  really  to  know  Paris 
learns  to  be  himself  at  his  truest,  to  think  the 
deepest  thoughts  of  which  he  is  capable.  All 
Paris  is  an  inspiration  to  individualism.  The 
sweeping  vastness  of  the  Place  de  la  Con- 

[  i7] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

corde  is  the  emblem  of  it ;  the  sidewalk  cafes 
are  its  symbol. 

In  Paris  every  man  has  a  favorite  cafe  to 
which  he  pays  allegiance,  and  in  his  choice 
he  reveals  something  of  his  character ;  for  it 
is  only  in  the  outward  material  expression 
of  themselves — busy,  white-aproned  waiters, 
cane  chairs,  and  little  marble-topped  tables, 
covering  half  the  sidewalk  on  the  boulevards, 
all  of  it  in  narrow  streets,  —  that  these  thou- 
sand havens  resemble  one  another ;  more  pro- 
foundly each  has  its  own  individuality.  The 
youth  seeks  the  maiden  who,  born  to  be  his 
mate,  languishes  somewhere  or  other  in  ex- 
pectation of  his  coming ;  with  far  more  cer- 
tainty of  success  he  may  in  Paris  go  in  quest 
of  a  cafe  which  shall  just  fit  his  character. 
Moreover,  the  cafe  is  always  there  waiting, 
whereas  maidens  have  been  known  to —  But 
that  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  subject. 

It  took  me  a  long  time  to  find  my  cafe, 
a  troubled  time  in  which  I  tried  many  sorts, 
feeling  in  each — though  in  many  I  recog- 

[  18  ] 


Cafe  du  Rond  Point 


■'.'  ft 

t 


■  /■'■■     mk% 

i 


.  >d? 


Sidewalk  Cafes 


nized  a  certain  charm  —  a  kind  of  uneasi- 
ness akin  to  that  of  a  man  in  clothes  made 
for  some  one  else.  I  early  saw  that  it  was 
not  among  the  sleepy  little  cafes  of  quiet, 
secluded  streets  that  I  should  discover  mine ; 
for,  as  one  feels  himself  most  a  part  of  life 
in  the  fields  where  there  is  no  other  human 
in  sight,  so  it  is  in  the  very  centre  of  the 
throng  that  one  is  capable  of  the  completest 
detachment.  The  habitues  of  these  retired 
places,  who  chatted  comfortably  over  their 
games  of  dominoes  and  manille,  were  pleas- 
ant, kindly  men  for  whom  I  felt  sympathy, 
but  they  were  not  individualists.  They  were, 
for  the  greater  part,  petty  employes  of  some 
bureau,  in  search  of  rest  after  their  six  hours 
of  dreary  mechanical  work;  and  rest  is  to 
be  found  in  losing  one's  identity,  in  becom- 
ing a  part  of  life,  not  in  separating  one's  self 
from  it.  The  individualist  does  not  desire 
rest.  What  he  strives  for  is  the  ability  to 
regard  unhampered  the  great  pageant  of  life, 
as  though  he  himself  bore  no  relation  to  it; 

[  19] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

and  how  should  there  be  rest  in  the  contem- 
plation of  this  strange  spectacle,  with  its  ab- 
surdities which  he  labors  to  reconcile,  and  its 
heterogeneity  in  which  he  struggles  to  find 


some  meaning? 


No,  the  cafe  of  my  desire  would  be  one  of 
the  many  that  line  the  wide,  feverish  boule- 
vards. That  was  clear,  —  far  less  clear  which. 
The  Cafe  de  la  Paix  I  knew,  to  begin  with, 
was  out  of  the  question.  In  that  ostentatious 
resort  beloved  of  foreigners,  where  one  is 
assaulted  by  vendors  of  post-cards,  furs,  and 
maps  of  Paris,  and  where  one  hears  all  about 
him  his  native  tongue  spoken  with  a  high 
nasal  intensity  characteristic  of  it  nowhere 
except  in  Europe,  solitude  is  as  impossible  as 
in  London  itself.  But,  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix 
eliminated,  there  remained  still  a  discourag- 
ing number,  among  which  somewhere  was 
mine. 

I  spent  many  afternoons  in  fruitless  search ; 
then  one  evening  I  found  it,  in  the  only  fash- 
ion by  which  one  ever  finds  anything  worth 

[    20] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 

while,  —  quite  by  chance.  I  do  not  remem- 
ber where  I  was  going,  or  why,  only  that 
I  was  being  carried  on  in  the  crowd  that 
streams  along  the  Boulevard  des  Italiens  at 
the  theatre  hour,  when  suddenly,  before  one 
of  the  numberless  displays  of  little  tables 
(and  for  what  reason  this  one,  I  wonder,  more 
than  another  ?),  I  turned  in  a  flash  of  recogni- 
tion. "  Why,  it 's  my  cafe  !  "  I  exclaimed  in 
the  tone  with  which  one  greets  an  old  friend. 
It  was,  without  a  doubt.  Although  I  had 
surely  never  been  there  before,  everything 
seemed  natural  and  right.  Even  the  faces  of 
the  men  at  the  tables  appeared  familiar.  For, 
as  in  Paris  one  chooses  the  cafe  with  the 
spirit  of  which  he  is  most  in  sympathy,  so 
in  each  the  habitues  form  a  circle  of  men, 
united,  not,  as  in  a  salon,  by  the  same  habits 
of  life,  but  by  the  same  habits  of  thought, 
which  is  a  closer  bond.  We  rarely  converse 
at  my  cafe,  but  we  bow  to  one  another 
as  we  arrive,  and  the  absence  of  one  at  his 

accustomed  hour  is  remarked  by  the  rest. 

[21  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

There  is  to  me  something  fine  in  this  cu- 
rious intimacy  of  men  who,  never  hav- 
ing exchanged  banalities,  indifferent  to  one 
another's  names  and  conditions,  by  their 
ignorance  of  the  petty  differences  among 
themselves  efface  them,  and  annihilate  all 
the  barriers  —  social  and  moral  prejudices, 
personal  foibles — over  which  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  acquaintance  one  must  strug- 
gle, or  around  which  one  must  circuitously 
pass,  —  and  arrive  at  once  at  the  silent  sym- 
pathy, the  tacit  recognition  of  similarity, 
that  is  friendship. 

The  oddest  thing  about  my  cafe,  one  that 
has  often  made  me  smile,  is  its  title,  which  im- 
plies mirth,  revelry,  even  debauch,  whereas 
in  fact  no  other  boulevard  cafe  surely  is  as 
serious  and  subdued  as  this  one.  It  is  called, 
—  but,  after  all,  why  should  I  tell  you  its 
name  ?  If  it  is  not  your  cafe,  to  go  there 
would  be  to  waste  your  time ;  and  if  it  is 
yours,  you  will  find  it  some  day  of  yourself; 
or  perhaps  you  have  found  it  already,  and 

[22  ] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 

are  one  of  the  unknown  friends  who  nod 
kindly  to  me  as  I  slip  into  my  place. 

I  do  not  know  what  your  thoughts  may  be 
there,  if  that  is  true,  but  my  own  are  strange, 
and  no  less  strange  that  other  men  have  been 
thinking  them  these  thousand  years.  Con- 
flicting, overwhelming  impressions,  tumult- 
uous fragments  of  ideas  without  beginning 
or  end,  confused  reflections  that  I  am  impo- 
tent to  classify  ;  strange  thoughts  indeed, — 
pitiful,  ironic,  gay  sometimes,  but  always  at 
bottom  sad  ;  for  although  here  I  am  in  the 
tranquil  back-waters,  there,  only  a  few  feet 
away,  all  life  is  flowing  past.  Verlaine's  splen- 
did lines  come  back  to  me  :  — 

"  Et  tu  coules  toujours,  Seine,  et  tout  en  rampant, 
Tu  traines  dans  Paris  ton  cours  de  vieux  serpent, 
De  vieux  serpent  boueux,  emportant  vers  tes  havres 
Tes  cargaisons  de  bois,  de  houille,  et  de  cadavres." 

But  this  is  a  greater  river  than  the  Seine.  It 
too  carries  its  proud  ships  and  its  derelicts  — 
and  its  corpses ;  only  it  flows  into  an  un- 
known sea. 

[  23  1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

At  first  in  the  crowd  drifting  by  me  it  is 
always  individuals  that  I  remark.    A  man 
passes  close  to  me,  holding  a  little  girl  of  six 
by  the  hand,  which  for  greater  safety  he 
keeps  so  high  that  she  walks  chiefly  with  her 
left  foot,  barely  touching  the  ground  from 
time  to  time  with  her  right.  She  stumbles 
along  contentedly,  looking  up  at  us,  wide- 
eyed  but  incuriously,  interested  really  only 
in  a  fruitless  attempt  to  touch  each  in  the 
nearest  row  of  tables  as  she  goes  by.   It  occurs 
to  me  with  a  swift  glimpse  of  myself  (for  in 
this  isolation  of  the  mind  one's  self  seems 
as  separate  and  objective  as  the  rest  of  the 
world),  that  she  is  a  very  fortunate  child. 
She  knows  what  she  wants  and  goes  straight 
for  it.  That  is  the  great  thing,  — .  to  know 
what  one  wants  and  try  for  it.   Nothing  else 
matters  much,  —  least  of  all  whether  one 
gets  it  or  not.  I  hope  she  may  always  keep 
the  characteristic,  and  I  think,'  as  I  glance 
up  at  the  face  of  her  father,  that  she  will.  He 
is  a  big  burly  man  of  the  class  that  is  not  the 

[24] 


Proprietor  of  a  Little  Shop 


. 


Sidewalk  Cafes 

People,  nor  yet  quite  the  littlest  bourgeoisie: 
proprietor,  I  imagine,  of  some  small  shop. 
As  he  strolls  by  (he  is  nearly  past  now), 
everything  in  his  manner,  from  the  erect 
poise  of  the  head  to  the  easy  fashion  with 
which  he  lets  others  avoid  him  rather  than 
go  out  of  his  way  himself,  proclaims  the  man 
of  fixed  habits  and  settled  life,  accepting 
unreservedly  the  world  as  he  finds  it,  with 
no  desire  to  change  it.  Not  a  man  of  high 
aspirations,  as  aspirations  are  counted,  but 
sure  of  the  ones  he  has,  —  with  his  troubles, 
of  course  :  small  money  matters  chiefly,  rent 
that  comes  due  too  frequently,  clients  who 
will  not  pay  their  bills ;  blessed  material 
troubles.  Himself  he  never  doubts,  or  the  im- 
portance of  his  existence.  Oh,  the  ease  and 
the  tranquillity  and  the  content  that  there 
must  be  in  never  having  questioned  one's 
self!  Never  to  have  felt  rush  over  one,  par- 
alyzing the  mind,  inhibiting  achievement, 
the  sudden  doubt  of  one's  ability  to  do  what 
one  is  attempting!    Never   to   have  passed 

[  25  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

through  the  grim  hours  when  the  thought 
of  all  the  men  who  have  tried  similarly  and 
failed  catches  one  like  physical  fear!  For 
one  who  aims  at  anything  creative  there  are 
periods  of  exhilaration,  none  of  content.  The 
exultant  moments  of  swift  accomplishment 
are  dearly  bought :  for  every  such  there  are 
ten  of  bitter  depression.  Those  who  are  be- 
set with  lofty  aspirations  pass  through  days 
blacker  than  the  man  in  the  street  and  his 
little  daughter  will  ever  know. 

But  they  have  been  gone  these  ten  min- 
utes, and  I  look  out  again  on  the  throng  that 
is  drifting  by.  Like  the  Ancient  Mariner,  I 
may  not  choose  my  victims.  I  cannot  delib- 
erately select  this  or  that  person  as  a  theme 
to  ponder.  It  is  as  if  some  one  else  chose  for 
me,  —  some  perverse  fairy  in  whose  choice 
there  is  neither  reason  nor  plausibility.  So 
this  time  I  skip  helplessly  a  man  who  might 
be  a  murderer,  and  another  who  is  surely  a 
musician,  to  feel  my  attention  caught,  illo- 
gically  enough,  by  a  couple  who  saunter  past. 

[  26] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 


They  are  young,  he  less  than  twenty-eight,  she 
barely  twenty,  and  they  are  newly  married. 
She  clings  to  his  arm  with  a  pretty  air  of  com- 
bined confidence  in  him  and  fear  of  all  the  rest 
of  the  world;  and  in  the  condescending  be- 
nevolence with  which  he  accepts  her  attitude 
there  is  the  unmistakable  mark  of  a  husband 
destined  to  be  happy,  adored,  and  never  found 
out.  They  are,  I  fancy,  on  their  wedding- 
trip  ;  at  any  rate  they  are  de province.  That  is 
clear  from  a  dozen  little  things,  but  most  of 
all  from  the  young  man's  walk,  a  kind  of 
loiter,  in  the  course  of  which  he  turns  indo- 
lently now  and  again  to  gaze  slowly  right 
and  left.  The  Parisian,  however  leisurely  his 
gait,  has  always  the  decisive  air  of  one  ac- 
customed to  swift  judgments;  when  he  looks 
about  him  in  the  streets,  it  is  with  a  rapid 
inclusive  glance.  My  eyes  meet  those  of  the 
young  woman  for  an  instant ;  she  has  pretty 
eyes  set  in  an  agreeable,  rather  character- 
less face,  — at  its  best  now  for  the  glow  of 
youth  and  happiness  that  suffuses  it,  —  but 

[  V  1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

with  nothing  in  them  to  hold  me;  more- 
over, she  turns  them  away  almost  immedi- 
ately, and  I  fix  my  own  on  her  husband. 

Caste  distinctions  are  not  sharply  defined 
in  this  democratic  country,  where  a  family 
may  with  equal  facility  rise  a  class  higher  or 
sink  one  lower  in  a  single  generation ;  but 
he  surely  is  of  the  upper  bourgeoisie,  probably 
the  bourgeoisie  of  affairs.  The  low,  smooth 
forehead,  placid  with  the  placidity  that  comes 
from  the  total  absence  of  abstract  ideas,  the 
firm  mouth  and  the  faint  lines  about  it  re- 
vealing notions  that  you  would  call  convic- 
tions if  you  liked  the  type,  prejudices  if  you 
did  not,  all  indicate  as  much.  It  is  a  good 
class,  a  class  of  men  who  do,  not  of  men  who 
think;  and,  after  all, — as  any  artist  or  au- 
thor will  loftily  admit,  —  there  must  be  men 
to  do  the  things  that  have  to  be  done.  But 
the  man's  life  is  planned;  he  knows  the 
things  he  is  to  do;  andsoit  is  with  the  woman 
that  I  feel  the  greater  sympathy.  She  has,  un- 
less I  misjudge  her,  so  pitifully  little  to  inter- 

[    28    ] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 

est  her  in  all  the  years  that  stretch  ahead  when 
her  husband  will  have  so  much !  I  hope  that 
she  may  bear  many  children,  and  I  think  I 
hope  that  there  may  be  money-troubles  in  her 
husband's  affairs,  —  not  deadening,  cramping 
troubles,  but  just  enough  so  that  existence 
may  not  be  too  easy  for  her,  and,  especially, 
enough  so  that  the  journey  to  Paris  may  not 
be  repeated,  though  often  projected.  For  so, 
seen  in  a  mist  of  youth  and  love,  and  looked 
back  at  with  a  wistful  tenderness,  Paris  will 
take  on  for  her  a  beauty  that,  beautiful  as  it 
is,  neither  it  nor  any  other  city  out  of  dreams 
has  ever  possessed. 

Afterwards  such  thoughts  seem  to  me 
often,  as  they  seem  to  you  now,  perhaps,  ab- 
surdly arrogant  and  superior;  and  so  indeed 
they  would  be  if  it  were  I,  the  /  of  little 
vices,  petty  virtues,  and  hampering  preju- 
dices, who  was  thinking  them.  But  it  is 
not  that/;  for  in  this  strange  separation  of 
one's  self  from  the  rest  of  life  one  seems 
to  cast  off  for  the  time  being  the  mortality 

[  29  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

of  his  nature  and  to  swell  suddenly  from  the 
atom,  the  infinitely  small  and  unimportant 
part  of  the  whole,  to  the  colossus  for  whom 
all  things  exist.  Poor  impotent  colossus,  — 
colossus  for  himself  alone !  That  is  the  bit- 
terest reflection  for  me,  —  that  I  can  do 
nothing,  cannot  change  one  thing  of  the 
many  that  seem  so  desperately  to  need 
changing;  can  only  think  and  think.  And 
yet  I  know  that  if  all  at  once  the  power  of 
a  God  to  reshape  these  people's  lives,  to 
"remould"  them  "nearer  to  the  heart's 
desire,"  were  given  me,  I  should  not  dare 
so  much  as  lift  a  finger. 

And  this  haggard  brilliant  creature  who 
passes  now,  — not  for  her? 

Civilization  is  marching  onward.  Every- 
thing serves  some  noble  purpose.  "  God  's 
in  his  heaven —  all  's  right  with  the  world." 
No  doubt.  Meanwhile  sit  in  my  sidewalk 
cafe,  look  out  at  the  woman-of-the-streets, 
and  say  it  if  you  can. 

The  horror  of  her  is  that  she  is  not  pit- 

[  3o] 


Sidewalk  Cafes 

iful.  In  the  hard  mouth  there  is  no  expres- 
sion; in  the  cold  eyes  that  wander  restlessly 
from  one  to  another  of  the  men  about  her 
there  is  no  emotion,  —  only  the  single  dull 
question ;  in  the  practised  raising  of  the 
skirts  there  is  no  semblance  of  passion.  She 
is  scarcely  more  than  an  automaton  now. 
Habits  hold  her  to  existence,  but  there  is  no 
life  left.  Even  pain  is  but  dully  felt,  I  am 
sure,  and  pleasure  scarcely  at  all.  Nothing 
of  the  woman  remains.  Did  I  not  say  that 
this  river  too  carried  its  corpses? 

But  suddenly,  in  the  stream  pouring  by  me, 
individuals  seem  no  longer  to  exist  by  them- 
selves. Bourgeois  and  prostitute  and  shop- 
keeper and  the  thousand  others  lose  their 
identity,  and  I  see  them  only  as  fragments 
of  the  whole  swirling  around  together  like 
dust-specks  in  a  ray  of  sunlight.  The  ironic 
thought  strikes  me  that  each  of  these  ap- 
pears to  himself  the  centre  of  the  confu- 
sion, and  struggles  and  jostles  his  neighbors 

[  3i  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

in  the  endeavor  to  defeat  the  rest  and 
achieve  his  own  purposes.  What,  I  wonder, 
can  be  the  meaning  in  this  which  looks  so 
meaningless?  Is  there  indeed  a  meaning? 
What  if  it  is  not  a  plan,  not  even  a  plan 
gone  wrong,  but  just  no  plan  at  all  ?  What 
if  in  all  the  years  that  we  have  hunted  for 
the  reason  of  things,  there  was  simply  no 
reason  to  find  ?  What  if  in  all  the  centuries 
that  we  have  prayed  our  contradictory 
prayers,  there  was  No  One  to  hear  ?  What 
if— 

Some  one  passing  between  the  tables 
brushes  my  sleeve.  I  start  painfully,  like  one 
waking  from  a  dream,  suddenly  conscious 
that  I  too  am  part  of  life.  I  am  no  longer 
the  colossus,  —  only  the  atom;  and  I  am 
very  tired.  I  glance  down.  My  vermouth 
stands  untouched  on  the  table.  I  drink  it 
hastily,  and  leaving  beside  the  glass  the  few 
sous  that  pay  for  this  hour  of  isolation,  I  step 
out  into  the  stream,  and  become  part  of  it, 
and  am  swept  away. 


Along  the  ghiay 


/  Choose  my  Home 


^ 


t*;# 


a 


^v    , 


I  m    * 


Ill 

/  Choose  My  Home 

[O-DAY,"  I  said  to  myself  de- 
cidedly, as  I  opened  my  eyes,  "  I 
must  choose  my  home." 

It  was  the  fault  of  the  breeze, 
—  the  little  breeze  that  crept  in  through  my 
open  bedroom  window,  scattering  sunlight 
across  the  floor,  and  carrying  a  hundred 
early-morning  sounds  and  perfumes,  —  the 
twittering  of  sparrows  in  the  court,  the  fra- 
grance of  spring  flowers,  and  even  the  plain- 
tive chant  of  the  chickweed-vendor  in  a 
distant  street,  crying  his  "  Mouron  pour  les 
petits  oiseaux."  All  May  was  in  the  breeze.  It 
set  one  tingling  with  the  desire  to  do  some- 
thing, but  something  pleasant,  unpractical, 
inconsequent,  not  too  definite,  —  and  so, 
since  choosing  my  home  is  the  most  beau- 

[  35  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

tifully  useless  of  all  my  occupations,  I  settled 
on  it  at  once. 

"  Bon  jour,  Monsieur  Claude,"  said  Eu- 
genie, entering  with  hot  water;  "vous  avez 
bien  dormiV 

"Bon  jour,  Eugenie;  tres  bien,  merci,"  I  re- 
plied. "  Aujourd' hui,  Eugenie,  je  vats  choisir 
une  maison  pour  moi,"  I  added  firmly. 

"Vrai,  Monsieur  Claude  V  said  Eugenie 
sympathetically,  but  without  surprise.  It  is 
impossible  for  me  to  surprise  Eugenie.  This 
is  due  partly  to  her  having  been  born  in 
Paris,  —  a  quality  as  rare  as  beauty,  —  and 
partly  to  the  fact  that  she  is  consumed  with 
a  devotion  to  me,  which  does  not  in  the 
least  prevent  her  from  cheating  me  in  buy- 
ing groceries,  but  which  puts  astonishment 
at  anything  I  may  say  out  of  the  question, 
as  a  kind  of  disloyalty.  In  reviewing  my 
characteristics,  I  have  never  been  able  to  dis- 
cover certainly  what  it  is  in  me  that  appeals 
to  Eugenie ;  but  the  secret  may  be  that,  since 
I  am  unable  to  be  impersonal  with  women 

[36] 


Street  Venders 


-  -    J 


$■■' 


- 


•• 


1    -. 


f.iil    5r  jwoue; 


/  Choose  My  Home 

of  any  class  except  those  whom  I  dislike, 
she  feels  in  the  tone  with  which  I  speak 
to  her  a  recognition  of  her  sex.  If  Eugenie 
were  a  mistress,  her  affection  would  no 
doubt  take  the  form  of  caresses;  as  she  is 
a  servant,  she  expends  it  on  polishing  my 
shoes  when  they  do  not  need  it,  and  some- 
times even  when  they  do.  Not,  however, 
that  my  position  is  deficient  in  other  than 
utilitarian  pleasures.  Eugenie  is  the  only 
person  who  has  ever  considered  me  hand- 
some. It  was  a  few  evenings  ago,  while  she 
stood  patiently  holding  a  boutonniere,  and  I 
was  adjusting  a  tie,  that  I  became  aware  of 
the  delusion. 

"  You  will  observe,  Eugenie,"  I  remarked, 
"a  great  difference  in  mirrors.  Now  this 
one,"  I  said,  with  a  vain  endeavor  to  get 
near  enough  to  judge  of  my  success,  "  makes 
me  appear  almost  good-looking,  while  in 
this,"  crossing  the  room  to  another,  "  I  am 
really  ugly  ! " 

"A     strange     glass,     indeed,    Monsieur 

[  37  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

Claude,"  exclaimed  Eugenie,  with  a  sincer- 
ity which  I  should  be  the  last  to  question, 
"  to  make  you  look  ugly  !  " 

Our  early-morning  conversations,  when 
she  has  entered  with  hot  water  and  shoes, 
and  I  am  lying  in  that  delicious  state  of 
profound  meditation  on  nothing  whatever 
that  just  precedes  getting  up,  afford  me  un- 
failing amusement ;  for  Eugenie  has  a  spon- 
taneous sense  of  humor  rare  in  a  woman, 
and  with  inimitable  verve  recounts  how,  by 
encouraging  the  boulangere  in  the  next  street 
to  relate  her  amours,  she  succeeded  in  pass- 
ing a  demonetized  two-franc  piece  —  Napo- 
leon III  uncrowned  —  which  some  one  had 
dishonestly  given  me ;  and  repeats  the  pit- 
eous plaint  of  the  coal-dealer's  assistant  over 
his  inability  to  get  himself  white  enough 
on  Sunday  to  be  accorded  the  kisses  of  his 
promise,  and  have  anything  of  the  day  left. 
But  on  this  particular  morning  the  conversa- 
tion was  serious. 

"  In  what  quarter,  Eugenie,  should  you 

[  38  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

advise  me  to  look  for  my  house  ? "  I  in- 
quired anxiously. 

"  Oh,"  said  Eugenie,  closing  the  window, 
"the  quartier  de  I'Etoi/e,  Monsieur  Claude. 
II  riy  a  que  §a  de  vraiment  chic." 

"Good,"  I  thought  to  myself,  smiling. 

Eugenie  is  the  only  woman  I  have  ever 
known  in  whom  bad  taste  is  consistent  and 
unfailing.  Others  —  many  others  —  have  it 
most  of  the  time,  but  subject  to  annoy- 
ing and  unexpected  relapses ;  with  her  it  is 
always  to  be  depended  upon.  Whenever  I 
have  impulsively  bought  a  vase,  of  which  on 
critical  reflection  I  begin  to  have  my  doubts, 
I  ask  Eugenie  for  her  opinion  ;  and  if  I  feel 
from  the  tone  of  her  praise  that  she  really 
likes  it,  I  give  it  away  as  a  wedding  present. 
It  is  only  fair  to  myself  to  say  that  I  have 
never  acquired  anything  in  Paris  over  which 
Eugenie  grew  genuinely  enthusiastic.  And 
so  now,  when  she  so  confidently  recom- 
mended the  quartier  de  I'Etoile,  my  doubts 
were  confirmed,  and  I  knew  that  I  might 

[  39] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

in  all  tranquillity  omit  it  from  my  wander- 
ings. Except  for  the  Champs  Elysees  and 
the  circle  about  the  noble  Arc  deTriomphe, 
that  district,  with  its  imposing  houses  and 
its  enormous  new  hotels  beloved  of  my 
countrymen,  has  seemed  to  me,  for  all  its 
ostentation,  rather  characterless.  I  some- 
times amuse  myself  by  imagining  what  sort 
of  person  would  typify  a  house,  or  a  street, 
or  even  a  whole  section  of  Paris.  For  the 
quartier  de  TILtoile  it  would  be  the  pompous 
man  who  enunciates  banalities  as  though 
they  were  vital,  newly  discovered  truths. 

I  inhabit  —  perhaps  you  should  be  told  — 
a  little  apartment  in  Passy,  and  shall  proba- 
bly as  long  as  I  live.  That  is  why,  on  this 
sunny,  intoxicating  May  morning,  choosing 
my  home  seemed  the  gayest,  most  harmo- 
niously frivolous  and  light-hearted  thing  I 
could  do.  That,  too,  was  why  I  was  to  set 
about  it  so  seriously.  I  have  always  been  able 
to  put  my  best  energy  into  the  search  for 
something  which  it  was  unnecessary  to  find. 

[40] 


The  Seine  at  Notre  Dame 


/  Choose  My  Home 

When  I  had  dressed,  and  sat  sipping  my  cof- 
fee, I  was  still  deep  in  reflection,  but  when 
at  last  I  set  the  cup  down,  my  decision  was 
taken. 

"  I  will  go  first  of  all,"  I  said,  "  to  the 
Boulevard  Maillot." 

(Oh,  Eugenie!  Eugenie!  Even  though  I 
rejected  your  suggestion,  had  it  not  insid- 
iously left  me  something  of  your  taste  for 
the  fleshpots?) 

Outside  every  one  was  singing, —  the  co- 
chers  on  their  boxes,  the  boys  wheeling  deliv- 
ery-carts, the  servants  on  their  way  to  market. 
It  was  still  early :  the  world  that  is  too  proud 
to  sing  in  the  street  was  not  yet  astir.  Even 
my  surly  concierge,  I  remembered  joyfully, 
had  been  emitting  strange  raucous  sounds 
which  I  chose  now  to  believe  were  song; 
and  when  a  concierge  sings!   .   .   . 

Beneath  the  quay  the  Seine  rippled  dain- 
tily by,  playing  prettily  with  the  reflections 
of  its  bridges,  and  sparkling  in  the  wake  of 
the  little  boats  —  the  bateaux  mouches —  that 

[4i  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

flit  swallow-like  in  great  curves  from  stop- 
ping-point to  stopping-point  along  it.  Over 
everything,  touching  softly  the  glistening 
roofs  of  houses  and  the  thousand  chimney- 
tops,  hung  a  delicately  moistly  blue  sky> 
cloudless,  but  streaked  with  faint  patches  of 
vapor. 

««  Le  ciel  est,  pardessus  le  toit, 
Si  bleu,  si  calme!  " 

I  sang  to  myself.  Verses  of  Verlaine's  are 
continually  rising  to  one's  lips  here ;  for  of 
all  the  thousands  who  have  felt  the  strange 
wistful  appeal  of  Paris,  he  alone  has  been 
able  to  turn  it  into  words. 

I  could  not  bring  myself  to  leave  the  river 
yet,  and  so  strolled  along  it  for  a  way,  up 
toward  the  city  proper.  A  strange  way  surely 
of  going  to  the  Boulevard  Maillot.  —  No 
matter  !  On  this  radiant  haphazard  morn- 
ing I  would  do  nothing  in  the  most  direct 
fashion. 

On  its  hill  ahead,  and  slightly  to  my 
left,  rose  the  palace  of  the  Trocadero,  its  two 

[42  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

lofty  towers  stained  pink  in  the  sunlight. 
People  shake  their  heads  over  the  Troca- 
dero;  and  indeed,  regarding  it  nearly,  one 
finds  little  to  say  for  it.  It  was  built  in  a 
period  of  atrocious  taste,  of  which  it  is,  if 
the  truth  must  be  told,  a  fair  example.  Yet  I, 
for  one,  should  be  sorry  if  it  were  gone;  for 
in  the  distance  its  vulgarity  fades  from  sight, 
and  its  huge  dome  and  tall  oriental  minarets 
take  on,  especially  in  early  morning  or  just 
at  sunset,  a  certain  massive  charm.  After  all, 
as  my  friend  the  artist  says,  there  is  not  much 
difference  between  good  architecture  and 
bad,  from  a  little  way  off.  Besides,  unfor- 
tunate as  it  is,  the  Trocadero  has  not,  even 
when  seen  close  at  hand,  the  kind  of  bad- 
ness that  offends,  possibly  because  its  vast- 
ness  is  not  in  the  least  impressive.  There 
is  an  apologetic  air  about  it  that  makes  one 
think  of  some  harmless  pathetic  monster  who 
should  say  sorrowfully,  "  I  know  I  'm  ugly, 
but  I  can't  help  it";  and  that  gives  one  an 
absurd  desire  to  pet  it.   "  Don't  laugh,"  I  said 

[43  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

to  myself,  when  I  had  climbed  up  past  the 
bronze  animals  in  the  garden  that  leads  to 
it,  and  was  crossing  its  enormous  portico ; 
"  Don't  laugh :  you  might  make  it  feel 
badly." 

Out  into  the  big  empty  Place  du  Troca- 
dero,  down  the  Avenue  d'Eylau  and  the  long 
rue  des  Belles  Feuilles,  to  the  Porte  Dau- 
phine.  I  left  the  city  by  this  gate  and  turned 
into  the  Allee  des  Fortifications,  that  skirts 
the  edge  of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  From 
within  the  Bois  came  the  soft  patter  of  chil- 
dren's voices,  the  song  of  birds,  and  the  fra- 
grance of  acacias ;  and  all,  it  seemed,  were 
calling  to  me. 

"No!  No!  No!"  I  said,  laughing,  "not 
to-day !  " 

I  must  have  said  it  aloud,  for  a  passer-by 
turned  suddenly  to  look  at  me ;  but  there  was 
only  kindliness  in  his  smile.   It  was  May. 

The  Boulevard  Maillot,  which  is  outside 
the  city  limits,  runs  along  the  Bois  from  the 
Porte  Maillot  clear  to  the  river.   It  changes 

[44  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

its  name,  to  be  sure,  at  the  Avenue  de  Madrid, 
where  it  turns  sharply ;  but  I  do  not  like  its 
second  name,  and  shall  speak  of  it  here,  if 
you  please,  as  though  it  had  kept  its  initial 
one.  For  the  first  ten  minutes  of  following 
it  in  its  course  away  from  the  city  gate, 
I  regarded  the  boulevard  with  disapproval. 
There  was  no  lure  in  the  mediocrity  of  these 
smug  dwellings,  resembling  unfortunately 
those  that  crowd  the  Newtons  or  other  of 
the  towns  about  Boston.  Here  lived  the  peo- 
ple who,  in  ordering  a  jewel  or  two  sent  them, 
would  not  be  able  to  say  "  The  Boulevard 
Maillot "  without  a  slight  compression  of  the 
lips  or  a  touch  of  consciousness  in  the  tone. 
I  was  considering  taking  a  home  among  the 
houses  where  live  those  to  whom  the  shop- 
keeper would  of  his  own  accord  observe, 
"The  Boulevard  Maillot,  doubtless.  What 
number,  if  you  please,  monsieur?  As  I  con- 
tinued on  my  way,  however,  the  houses  drew 
slowly  back  from  the  street,  and  each  seemed 
a  little  less  banal  than  the  one  before,  —  to 

[45  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

have  subtly  more  of  an  air  of  breeding :  it 
was  like  the  transformation  scene  in  a  palace 
of  illusions,  —  until  at  last  the  acme  was 
reached  in  a  limitless  succession  of  palaces 
set,  among  vine-covered  oaks  and  cedars, 
deep  in  grounds  that  were  screened  from  too 
complete  a  scrutiny  by  splendid  flowering 
hedges,  but  in  which,  nevertheless,  one 
could  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  street, 
by  standing  on  tip-toe,  discern  flower-beds, 
columns,  and  the  greenest  of  green  turf,  with 
sometimes  a  gardener  sprinkling  it.  The 
white  pillars  of  little  arbors  gleamed  among 
the  foliage.  Everything  here  was  ordered, 
faultless  and  serene,  exhaling  an  agreeable 
aroma  of  riches.  Only  a  young  girl  picking 
roses  was  needed  to  make  of  it  a  Royal 
Academy  picture. 

I  fell,  I  confess,under  the  spell;  yet,  though 
I  lingered  pleasantly  before  many  of  these 
mansions,  it  was  less  in  a  liking  for  any  par- 
ticular one  among  them,  than  in  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  idea  they  collectively  expressed, 

[46] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

—  life  freed  from  all  petty  concern  with  ex- 
istence, and  simplified  by  a  lavish  systematic 
complexity  (the  only  manner  in  which  it 
can  be  honestly  simplified  to-day).  Never  to 
have  to  say  to  myself, "  You  can't  afford  this," 
"  You  '11  have  to  give  up  that " ;  never  to  con- 
sider sadly  that  one's  frock-coat  is  becoming 
worn;  to  be  robbed,  doubtless,  in  a  thousand 
fashions,  but  never  to  care  !  Oh,  decidedly, 
it  was  the  only  way  of  living  !  And  I  could 
be  trusted  with  it,  too.  My  tastes  were  fixed ; 
could  wealth  destroy  my  love  of  books,  of 
pictures,  and  of  music  ? 

My  fancy  was  loose  now,  and  dragging  me 
along  frantically.  Innumerable  projects  pre- 
sented themselves.  I  would  eliminate  ugli- 
ness from  all  about  me ;  I  would  make  my 
home  so  beautiful  that  artists  and  authors 
and  even  musicians  should  forget  their  petty 
feuds  in  its  suave  atmosphere,  and  become 
personally  the  finer  selves  that  they  habitu- 
ally put  only  into  their  work.  Each  of  my 
dinners  should  be  a  poem  ;   I  could  see  the 

[47  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

table  now,  —  and  the  whole  room,  —  with 
the  candle-light  falling  on  old  china  and 
bringing  out  soft  faded  colors  in  the  tapes- 
tries on  the  walls.  The  dining-room  would 
be  Gothic,  I  supposed,  —  or  Renaissance.  At 
any  rate,  the  salon  should  be  Louis  XIII.  But 
I  would  not  furnish  my  house  hastily;  many 
rooms  would  remain  bare  a  long  time.  It 
would  be  folly  to  deny  myself  the  joy  of  the 
slow  accumulation  in  which  each  chair  or 
cabinet  represents  a  discovery.  I  remembered 
pieces  of  furniture  seen  recently.  There  had 
been  an  exquisite  Louis  XVI  dressing-table 
in  the  window  of  a  shop  on  the  Quai  Vol- 
taire. I  hoped  it  had  not  been  sold;  it  was 
just  the  thing  for  a  — 

"Yes,"  said  Fancy,  "go  on  —  for  a  bou- 
doir! Of  course  you'll  have  a  wife.  Every- 
body on  the  Boulevard  Maillot  has  one."  I 
stopped  short. 

"A  wife!   Are  you  sure?"  I  asked. 

"Absolutely  certain." 

A  wife.  I  thought  with  a  shiver  of  a  dream 

[48  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

I  had  recently  had,  in  which  I  was  being 
married,  going  through  the  formalities  of 
the  rite  against  my  will,  muttering  "  yes ' 
where  I  wanted  to  shout  "  no,"  and  recov- 
ering from  my  state  of  submissiveness  only 
when  the  last  guest  had  departed  and  I  was 
left  alone  with  my  bride. 

"But,"  I  had  cried  then,  —  and  it  did 
seem  to  me  afterwards  to  have  been  a  bit 
rude  of  me,  —  "I  don't  want  to  be  married  ! 
Can't  you  understand  ? "  (She  really  appeared 
not  to.)  "I  want  to  be  free!  free!" — and 
so  awoke. 

A  wife!  Why  should  she  come  now,  to 
spoil  everything?  I  would  not  give  in  at 
once. 

"But  you  see,"  I  suggested,  "I'd  be  dif- 
ferent from  the  others :  I  'd  be  an  eccentric." 

"Nonsense,"  said  Fancy  sternly.  "If 
you  're  going  to  live  on  the  Boulevard 
Maillot,  you  must  do  as  the  Boulevard  Mail- 
lot does." 

Duty !  Responsibility !   Concern  for  what 

[  49] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

others  might  think !  —  What  a  Pandora's  box 
this  imaginary  helpmate  was  opening.  In 
Passy  I  had  suppressed  duty ;  I  did  only  what 
I  cared  to  do,  and  I  rarely  saw  the  people  I 
disliked.  Could  it  be  that  on  the  Boulevard 
Maillot  one's  liberty  was  less?  A  wife  — 

"  Why  not  ? "  said  Fancy  coaxingly.  "  You 
would  n't  have  to  see  her  often.  You  would 
play  with  your  friends  and  she  with  hers,  and 
you'd  have  separate  suites  of  apartments,  — 
it  would  n't  be  bad.  On  pleasant  mornings 
you  'd  breakfast  together  in  the  garden. 
You'd  get  there  first,  and  presently  she 
would  come  delicately  down  the  steps,  in  a 
soft  trailing  morning-gown"  — 

I  smiled  in  surrender.  Morning-gowns 
were  attractive.  I  was  off  again  now,  but 
with  less  exhilaration,  and  more  cautiously, 
like  a  rider  who  has  had  a  bad  fall.  I  would 
have  horses,  I  thought,  and  an  automobile, 
—  one  automobile,  what  was  I  thinking 
of?  —  two,  even  three,  perhaps.  But  this 
was  the  end. 

[  So] 


A  Parisienne 


/ 


t. 


/  Choose  My  Home 

"It's  time  you  left  the  Boulevard  Mail- 
lot," I  said  sternly  to  myself.  "You  are  be- 
coming too  extravagant." 

One  must  preserve  plausibility  even  in  the 
search  for  the  impossible.  Besides,  although 
to  correct  one's  self  for  actual  faults  is  so  dis- 
agreeable an  occupation  that  no  wise  man 
would  spend  a  moment's  time  on  it,  to  re- 
prove one's  self  for  sins  that  are  only  of  the 
imagination  is  an  inexhaustible  pleasure. 
There  is  no  bitterness,  and  the  virtuous  glow 
is  quite  as  warm  as  though  the  offence  had 
been  real.  So  now  it  was  with  genuine  relish 
that  I  made  up  my  mind  to  do  penance,  — 
particularly  as  the  penance  meant  merely  a 
journey  to  Montmartre.  The  truly  tolerant 
man  is  not  the  man  who  is  lenient  toward 
the  faults  of  others,  but  he  who  is  lenient 
toward  his  own ;  he  has  so  much  more  to 
forgive.  But  when  I  had  taken  the  little 
tramway  of  the  Val  d'Or  to  the  Porte  Mail- 
lot, had  descended  into  the  musty  depths  of 
the  Metro,  and  was  being  whirled  noisily 

[  5i  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

through  the  dim  tunnels  beneath  Paris,  I 
wondered  whether,  after  all,  it  was  not  the 
thought  of  the  wife  that  had  driven  me  from 
the  Boulevard  Maillot. 

Marriage  seems  to  me  an  ignominious  in- 
stitution. As  I  steer  out  among  the  matri- 
monial rocks,  that  beset  one's  early  progress, 
toward  the  open  sea  of  recognized  bache- 
lordom,  where  there  is  only  an  occasional 
clearly  seen  reef,  easy  to  avoid  for  one  with 
skill  enough  to  get  so  far,  I  feel  an  increasing 
exultation.  There  are  men  who  look  upon 
the  fact  of  having  taken  a  wife  with  pride,  as 
though  they  had  achieved  something  diffi- 
cult. Poor  fools,  not  to  see  that  any  one  — 
be  he  as  ill-favored  as  Cerberus  or  as  dull  as  a 
maxim  of  Sir  John  Lubbock's — can  marry, 
and  that  they  have  fallen  dupe  to  Nature ! 
But  I  know  her  now,  the  jade,  for  what  she 
is, — wily,  unscrupulous,  deceitful,  having  at 
heart  a  single  end,  the  perpetuation  of  the 
race,  to  reach  which  she  will  employ  no 
matter  what  means.    The  individual  cares 

[  52] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

nothing  for  the  race,  and  Nature  cares  no- 
thing for  the  individual,  except  as  he  forms 
part  of  it.  But  she  needs  him,  and  so  she  sets 
her  lying  snares,  into  one  of  which  he  rushes, 
silly  dreamer,  thinking  it  the  gate  to  para- 
dise, only  to  find  himself  a  slave.  For  Nature 
is  pitiless  in  her  unconcern  for  the  man  once 
caught.  He  must  serve  her  purpose  now ; 
illusions  are  no  longer  necessary. 

The  mystery  of  love,  feminine  charm,  the 
dream  of  an  embodied  ideal,  —  they  appeal 
to  me  too,  almost  irresistibly  at  times;  but 
I  know  them  for  the  bait  they  are,  and,  aware 
of  the  steel  springs  beneath,  find  somehow 
strength  to  turn  aside.  I  may  be  trapped  one 
day,  but  it  will  at  least  be  with  my  eyes  open, 
and  knowing  that  I  am  being  deceived. 

There  is  one  other  lure  which  I  have  not 
yet  felt,  but  which  Nature  will  surely  hold 
out  to  me  when  I  have  grown  a  little  older, 
—  for  she  never  gives  any  one  up,  —  the 
vision  of  comfort,  domesticity,  a  fireside,  and 
slippers.  It  is  the  most  dangerous  of  all ;  for 

[  53  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

while  the  rest  were  beautiful  lies,  this  has  a 
foundation  of  truth.  It  is  the  basest,  too. 
The  young  man's  search  for  a  mate  in  whom 
shall  be  nothing  lower  than  what  is  finest  in 
himself,  the  endeavor  to  grasp  absolute  per- 
fection ;  however  Utopian  and  pre-doomed  to 
failure  such  attempts,  they  are  noble  dreams; 
but  the  desire  for  comfort  is  the  desire  for 
mediocrity,  which  lurks  somewhere  in  all 
of  us>  —  except,  perhaps,  in  poets.  Comfort 
degrades.  He  who  has  succumbed  to  its  tran- 
quil  charm  is  forever  lost  to  ideas  and  to 
creative  achievement.  The  melancholy  re- 
flection is  that  he  did  not  need  to  be.  The 
opposite  of  commonplace  is  not  talented,  but 
worth  while;  and  whoever  is  conscious  of  gen- 
eral ideas,  no  matter  how  primitive  or  con- 
fused, is  worth  while.  No  one  is  common- 
place at  twenty ;  no  one  need  be  at  forty-five. 
Mediocrity  is  not  a  lack  of  distinction,  but 
a  state  of  mind.  May  heaven  preserve  us  all 
from  the  lotos-flower  !  Men  are  sometimes 
to  be  found,  great  enough  to  undergo  mar- 

[  54] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

riage  —  even  a  happy  marriage — without 
degeneration  ;  but,  considering  myself,  I 
shake  my  head.  As  the  manuals  of  physi- 
ology that  we  studied  in  the  grammar-school 
used  to  say  about  the  use  of  alcohol :  "Since 
the  evil  results  are  so  certain  and  the  good 
so  problematic,  surely  the  wisest  course  is  to 
abstain  altogether."  Thus  I  reflected  in  the 
Paris  subway,  as  the  electric  train  carried 
me  swiftly  away  from  the  Boulevard  Mail- 
lot and  the  home  that  grew  every  moment 
less  to  my  taste. 

Pigalle!  I  left  the  car,  ascended  a  musty 
staircase,  pushed  open  a  door,  and  stood, 
just  outside,  blinking  in  the  sudden  light. 
The  Metro,  like  most  other  useful  contriv- 
ances, is  disagreeable;  but  it  has  its  merits. 
There  is,  after  all,  something  enchanted  and 
Arabian  about  it.  If  I  had  come  to  Mont- 
martre  from  the  Boulevard  Maillot  by  tram, 
by  bus,  or  on  foot,  the  alteration  in  my  sur- 
roundings would  have  taken  place  so  grad- 
ually that  the  final  contrast  would  have  been 

[  55  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

dulled;  as  it  was,  had  the  genie  of  the  ring 
snatched  me  up  and  set  me  down  here,  the 
change  could  not  have  been  sharper  or  more 
absolute.  The  Boulevard  Maillot  had  been 
dignified,  handsome,  and  somewhat  too  well- 
bred;  the  Place  Pigalle  was  careless,  ugly, 
and  not  well-bred  at  all.  The  Boulevard 
Maillot  had  breathed  a  genteel  repression ; 
the  Place  Pigalle,  though  it  was  doing  no- 
thing out  of  the  way  now,  lacked  decorum, 
like  a  chorus-girl  in  repose. 

I  stood  for  a  moment  deliberating  where 
to  go  first,  until  thethoughtof  howwonder- 
ful  Paris  must  appear  this  morning  from  the 
Butte  led  me  finally  into  the  rue  des  Mar- 
tyrs, and  so  onward,  until  I  came  to  the  foot 
of  the  long  successive  flights  of  steps  that 
lead  to  the  crest  of  the  hill  on  which  rises 
the  Basilica  of  the  Sacre  Coeur.  Pausing  here 
to  look  up,  I  noted  with  appreciation  the 
way  the  dilapidated  houses  leaned,  in  all  the 
picturesqueness  of  squalor,  over  the  dingy 
stairs.  On  one  of  the  landings  far  above  me, 

[  56] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

and  half  in  shadow,  half  in  a  pool  of  sun- 
light that  had  fallen,  a  slanting  golden  shower, 
from  a  gap  in  the  rickety  roofs  of  tenements, 
a  market-woman  had  paused  for  breath  in 
her  slow  descent.  Her  ample  skirts  were 
pinned  up,  and  her  extended  left  arm  pressed 
against  her  hip  a  basket  of  yellow  carrots  and 
dusty  red  beets.  A  crimson  handkerchief  was 
tied  about  her  head.  She  might  have  been 
an  Italian  of  the  south,  and  this  a  street 
in  Naples,  dating  from  the  Middle  Ages.  So 
pervasive  seemed  the  mellow  spirit  of  age  in 
this  curious  thoroughfare,  that  the  phrases 
"old  houses"  and  "ancient  stairs"  passed 
agreeably  through  my  mind. 

Then  suddenly  I  became  aware  —  not 
through  anything  false  or  melodramatic  in 
the  scene,  but  through  an  unfortunate  ac- 
quaintance with  the  historical  geography  of 
Paris  —  that  I  was  being  deceived:  the  effect 
of  antiquity  in  my  surroundings  was  an  illu- 
sion. Here,  no  longer  ago  than  the  forties, 
were  little  suburban  homes ;  pleasant  gardens 

[  57] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

covered  the  slopes  of  this  hill,  and  attractive 
cottages  crowned  it.  This  was  the  Mont- 
rouge  of  fifty  years  ago.  As  I  climbed  the 
stairs  I  looked  critically  from  right  to  left 
for  some  flaw  in  the  setting,  for  the  absence 
of  some  touch  that  only  an  accumulation 
of  centuries  could  give;  but  in  vain.  The 
atmosphere  of  extreme  age  that  seemed 
to  hang  over  these  houses,  built  within  the 
memory  of  many  a  man,  was  as  subtle  and 
convincing  as  that  one  feels  in  Amalfi,  and 
I  found  myself  driven  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  mysterious  satisfying  impression  of  an- 
tiquity is  aroused  not  by  antiquity  itself  but 
by  a  certain  arrangement  of  material.  Dilap- 
idation alone  will  not  bring  it  (there  were, 
I  remembered,  streets  as  decayed  and  tum- 
ble-down as  this  in  Chicago,  and  heaven 
knows  there  was  no  glamour  of  antiquity 
about  them  !),  but  dilapidation  must  enter  in. 
The  effect  of  age  obtained  by  this  narrow 
street  of  stairs  up  which  I  climbed  was  purely 
fortuitous.   Until  now  the  requisite  arrange- 

[  58] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

ment  had  been  unconscious,  a  matter  of 
chance;   but  it  need  not  be. 

What  a  discovery,  I  thought,  I  had  made 
for  my  country !  With  our  initiative,  what 
might  we  not  do,  once  the  laws  that  must 
be  followed  to  produce  the  impression  of 
antiquity  were  thoroughly  understood  ?  We 
would  build  dilapidated  cities  in  New  York 
State,  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan,  or  — 
yes  —  even  in  Kansas,  beside  which  Athens 
(Greece)  would  seem  modern,  and  Venice 
but  a  village  of  yesterday.  Perugia  and 
Avignon  would  be  rarely  visited  then  ;  in- 
stead, tourists  from  all  over  the  world  would 
throng  to  America,  to  admire  reverently, 
and  to  scribble  their  names  in  pencil  on  the 
carefully  decaying  stones  of  these  more  con- 
vincingly ancient  cities.  With  which  patri- 
otic vision  I  reached  the  top  of  the  steps. 

I  would  not  look  down  at  once,  but 
walked  onward,  keeping  my  eyes  averted, 
saving  my  sensations  as  a  child  saves  its 
choicest  sweets,  until  I  reached  the  platform 

[  59] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

before  the  Basilica.  Then  only  I  turned  to 
gaze  down  at  the  city  that  unrolled  itself 
beneath  me.  The  first  thing  I  remarked  was 
that,  for  all  the  bright  May  sunshine,  a  haze 
hung  over  Paris, —  not  a  haze  that  dulled 
and  concealed,  but  a  delicate  luminous  pre- 
sence that  interpreted  and  idealized,  bring- 
ing out  what  was  beautiful  and  hiding  what 
was  ugly  in  everything  it  touched,  drawing 
something  of  the  warm  softness  of  the  spring 
sky  down  about  the  city,  vaguely  full  of  dis- 
seminate color,  and  as  little  to  be  deplored 
as  the  mist  in  a  picture  of  Carriere's.  We  in 
America  —  in  those  parts  of  it,  at  least,  with 
which  I  am  familiar  —  have  these  warm, 
radiant  hazes  only  in  autumn ;  but  Paris  is 
seldom  without  them.  It  is  they,  perhaps, 
together  with  the  pale  mystery  of  the  Pari- 
sian sky,  that  give  her  that  subtlety  of  beauty 
which  even  Florence  lacks. 

My  eyes  wandered  over  the  spectacle  be- 
neath me:  there  were  the  Madeleine  and 
the  Bourse  and  the  Porte  Saint-Denis;  there 

[60] 


A  Little  Street  near  Boulevard  St.  Germain 


v- 


;&■ 


% 


1«t 


I    « 


•  ~:jn$sw*r> 


* 


.?»«• 


'    '/ 


/  Choose  My  Home 

in  the  middle  distance  was  the  river,  only  a 
curving  thread  of  light  now ;  and  there  be- 
yond it  was  the  Church  of  Saint-Germain- 
des-Pres,  and,  scarcely  seen,  the  two  towers 
of  Saint-Sulpice.  I  laughed  to  myself  in  joy 
over  the  unreality  of  it  all.  It  did  not  seem 
a  city  of  stone  and  mortar,  but  the  setting 
for  a  play;  one  would  have  said  the  third  act 
of  "Louise." 

"How  strange!"  I  thought,  as  I  stood 
leaning  over  the  parapet  and  picking  out  the 
tiny  effigies  of  familiar  monuments  in  the 
scene  below,  "  that  by  climbing  a  few  stairs 
I  can  make  the  massive  Opera  shrink  to  a 
toy  that  I  might  put  in  my  pocket,  and  the 
great  Louvre  itself  dwindle  to  the  size  of  a 
child's  house  of  blocks  !  " 

Then  suddenly  all  the  clocks  of  Paris  be- 
gan striking  noon,  the  little  cannon  boomed 
faintly  from  the  Eiffel  Tower,  and  I  became 
swiftly  conscious  of  being  hungry.  I  turned 
away  and  walked  briskly  back  in  the  di- 
rection  I   had  come,  without  so   much  as 

[61  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

ascending  the  few  extra  steps  to  the  Basilica 
of  the  Sacre  Coeur. 

"There  's  no  use  going  in,"  I  assured  my- 
self. "  I  've seen  it  before,  and  it's  Byzantine 
without  being  extravagant,  and  Romanesque 
without  being  bare,  and  it 's  simple  and  har- 
monious ;  but  its  excellence  is  too  conscious 
to  inspire  so  much  as  a  suggestion  of  the 
awe  and  the  wonder  that  we  feel  in  the 
most  imperfect  church  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
We  can  do  many  things  to-day  better  than 
they  have  been  done  before,  but  we  are 
wrong  to  build  churches  :  for  to  build  them 
nobly  the  deep  reverence  that  is  the  result 
of  passionate  faith  is  required,  and  there  is 
no  such  faith  left  in  the  world,  —  at  least  not 
in  men  intelligent  enough  to  become  archi- 
tects." 

Coward!  Hypocrite!  The  constant  pose 
of  being  finer  than  one  is,  is  a  necessary  and 
admirable  condition  of  one's  relations  with 
others;  but  it  becomes  shameful  maintained 
with  one's  self.  Why  could  I  not  have  said: 

[62  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

"No,  I  will  not  go  in,  because  I  am  hungry, 
and  there  is  not  a  church  in  Paris  I  would 
go  to  see  when  I  am  hungry  except  the 
Sainte-Chapelle,  and  that  not  if  I  was  very 
hungry"  ? 

Oh,  for  a  poet  great  enough  to  convince 
us  of  the  nobility  and  the  glory  of  eating 
when  we  are  really  hungry !  We  reserve  the 
splendor  of  our  verse  for  love ;  but  there  is 
not  half  the  high  satisfaction  in  being  in  love 
that  there  is  in  dining  well  after  a  hard  gallop 
over  country  roads.  I  know,  for  I  have  tried 
both.  Eating,  however,  is  habitual,  good  for 
us,  and  indispensable,  while  love  is  not;  and 
we  are  all  agreed  that  beauty  is  to  be  found 
only  in  what  is  superfluous  and  harmful. 
Poets  have  sometimes  touched  on  the  sub- 
ject, but  euphemistically,  as  though  eating 
were  something  gross  that  must  in  art  be 
treated  delicately,  like  an  immoral  theme  in 
a  London  play.  Keats,  you  remember,  writes 
of  "candied  apple,  quince  and  plum,  and 
gourd  with  jellies  .   .   .  and   lucent  syrops 

[63  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

tinct  with  cinnamon  .  .  .  manna  and  dates 
.  .  .  spiced  dainties."  I  am  not  sure  as  to 
manna,  but  the  rest  are  all  very  bad  for  the 
digestion.  Perhaps  it  is  because  it  is  the 
worst  thing  known  for  the  digestion,  that 
we  unite  in  considering  love  so  superlatively- 
poetic. 

Arrived  for  the  second  time  at  the  Place 
Pigalle,  I  entered  the  cabaret  known  as  the 
Rat  Mort.  I  was  familiar  with  it  already  as 
(in  its  downstairs  room)  the  least  insincere 
of  these  restaurants  de  nidty  and  liked  it  in  an 
unenthusiastic  way  for  the  attitude  of  cynical 
carelessness  and  irresponsibility  that  it  ex- 
pressed. I  had  found  it  at  midnight  as  good 
a  place  to  talk,  for  friends  intimate  enough 
to  say  whatever  came  into  their  heads  with- 
out concern  for  what  that  might  be,  as  ex- 
isted in  Montmartre.  But  I  had  never  seen 
it  by  daylight,  and  I  was  interested  in  dis- 
covering to  what  depths  of  reality  a  boite 
which  held  so  little  of  illusion  at  three  in 
the  morning  could  sink  at  noon.  So  I  made 

[64  ] 


Au  "Rat  Mort 


tu    ft*,T    MOfcT 


/  Choose  My  Home 

my  way  in,  through  a  babble  of  voices  and 
the  composite  odor  of  many  dishes,  toward 
an  unoccupied  section  of  the  red-plush  sofa 
that  bounds  the  little  room,  and  there,  sit- 
ting down  before  one  of  the  little  rectangu- 
lar marble-topped  tables  to  a  table  d'hote  lun- 
cheon at  two  francs  fifty,  looked  about  in 
mild  curiosity. 

Opposite  me,  beside  the  partition  which 
divides  the  room  in  two,  stood  the  upright 
piano  which  by  night  is  never  silent.  But  it 
was  closed  now  and  at  peace,  and  the  chair 
belonging  to  the  rest  of  the  orchestra  had 
been  pushed  back  against  the  wall.  And, 
really,  when  that  is  said,  all  is  said.  The  res- 
taurant was  full,  or  nearly  so,  but  the  certain 
coarse  charm  that  one  felt  in  it  during  the 
hours  between  midnight  and  dawn  was  gone 
now,  —  gone  utterly;  only  the  vulgarity  was 
left.  The  faces  clustered  about  the  tables 
were  no  longer  units  making  up  a  whole  that 
somehow  pleased  me,  but  just  faces,  sordid, 
dull,  often  grossly  marked  with  the  plain 

[65  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

signs  of  vicious  living.  It  is  probable  that 
many  of  the  men  were  artists ;  but  I  was  not 
a  schoolgirl  to  thrill  at  the  mere  word,  and 
for  most  of  these  the  word  alone  would  have 
an  existence.  Montmartre  is  full  of  cvnical 
daubers,  for  whom  art  is  not  a  high  calling 
to  be  wrestled  with  Jacob-like,  and  so  sub- 
dued to  a  noble  slavery,  but  a  name  to  cover 
and  excuse  their  vices  and  the  vagaries  of  their 
indolent  lives.  Some  are  rates, — the  rates 
who  had  only  a  spark  of  talent  and  not  per- 
sistence enough  to  keep  even  that  alive,  who 
failed  miserably  as  soon  as  they  put  brush  to 
canvas,  and  about  whose  failure  there  is  no- 
thing splendid;  but  the  greater  number  are 
impostors,  men  of  no  ability,  disguising  their 
lack  of  the  technique  that  only  a  long  drudg- 
ery, of  which  they  were  morally  incapable, 
could  have  given  them,  as  a  breaking  away 
from  sterile  academic  forms;  taking  up  with 
each  successive  new  school  of  extremists 
in  painting ;  and  doing,  in  the  intervals  of 
leisure  that  their  amusements   leave  them, 

[66] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

compositionless  monstrosities  of  color  that 
they  call  the  "New  Art"  and  hang  in  the 
Salon  des  Independants  (where  there  is  no 
jury). 

I  do  not  assert  that  there  are  not  true 
artists  in  Montmartre,  young  men  struggling 
toward  an  honest,  sane  expression  of  them- 
selves that,  when  achieved,  will  some  day 
mean  recognition  and  fame,  —  only  that 
there  are  rather  more  counterfeits  here  than 
elsewhere.  But  as  I  looked  about  me  now, 
I  could  see  none  who  might  be  the  genuine. 
Here  were  caricatures  enough:  hair  worn 
long,  baggy  velveteen  trousers,  a  haughty 
shabbiness,  —  all  the  traditional  symbols  of 
art  were  present,  but  displayed  with  such  a 
lack  of  enthusiasm,  such  a  jaded  effrontery, 
so  clear  a  consciousness  of  their  being  only 
a  make-up,  that  they  were  not  even  amus- 
ing. I  think  I  had  never  felt  so  oppressive 
an  atmosphere  of  disillusionment.  And  it 
came  to  me,  with  a  sharp  scorn  of  myself 
for  having  been  so  easily  duped,  how  super- 

[  67  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

ficial  was  the  glamour  this  place  held  at  night. 
I  have  touched  the  truth  already; — the  piano 
was  closed  now,  and  the  chair  belonging  to 
the  rest  of  the  orchestra  had  been  pushed 
back  against  the  wall. 

As  I  sat  over  my  excellent  luncheon  at 
two-francs-fifty,  I  meditated  on  the  delusion 
of  bohemianism.  If  bohemianism  is  taken 
to  mean  the  ignoring  of  useless  conventions, 
then  every  man  with  mind  enough  to  have 
a  philosophy  of  life  is  bohemian,  the  true 
aristocrat  as  much  as  the  needy  author, — 
perhaps  even  more  satisfactorily  so:  for  the 
aristocrat  discards  only  those  dull  and  anti- 
quated forms  that  clog  the  daily  flow  of  ex- 
istence, retaining  the  many  that  render  it 
easier  and  pleasanter,  while  the  author,  less 
civilized,  is  apt  to  discard  good  and  bad  alike. 
If  this  were  all  bohemianism  meant,  who 
would  not  be  a  bohemian  ?  But  so  moderate 
a  conception  of  the  word  is  far  from  the 
sense  in  which  it  is  usually  taken,  and  I  sug- 
gest it  only  because  there  is  no  name  for 

[68  ] 


On  lie  de  la  Cite 


\ 


/  Choose  My  Home 

this  state  of  mind,  and  because  it  is  what  I 
should  like  bohemianism  to  mean. 

Bohemianism,  however,  as  it  is  attempted 
by  young  artists,  or  more  perfectly  conceived 
by  the  Philistine  (who  is  at  bottom  the 
most  sentimental  of  creatures),  stands  vaguely 
for  a  radiant  manner  of  life,  the  concomi- 
tants of  which  are  poverty,  ideals,  ambitions, 
and  an  ignorance  of  money  entailing  a  cer- 
tain pleasant  dishonesty  in  dealing  with  shop- 
keepers. The  word  has  to  the  popular  mind 
a  kind  of  enchantment;  it  stands  for  what 
is  left  of  romance.  An  existence  fulfilling 
these  requirements  seems  to  us,  for  those 
fortunate  ones  who  can  lead  it,  an  emanci- 
pation from  weary  formalities  and  rules  of 
conduct. 

Error  !  Error  !  Error !  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  liberty.  You  can  free  yourself  from 
one  set  of  laws  only  by  establishing  another. 
Bohemianism  is  an  artificial  state.  The  bo- 
hemian  need  not  be  logical ;  no,  but  he  must 
be  illogical.    He  is  not  obliged  to  think  of 

[69] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

money;  but  he  is  obliged  by  all  the  rules  of 
the  order  not  to  think  of  it.  Three  or  four 
boys  live  in  common,  and  every  one  does 
what  he  pleases ;  but  this  is  because  the 
others  know  beforehand  what  he  will  do, — 
or,  at  least,  what  he  will  not  do.  I  remem- 
ber to  have  passed  an  evening  once  in  the 
studio  of  a  woman  in  "the  Quarter,"  and  to 
have  asked,  with  no  intent  to  offend,  where 
I  might  put  the  ashes  of  my  cigarette. 

"  Oh,"  she  said  reproachfully,  "  throw 
them  on  the  floor,  of  course!  We're  bohe- 
mian,  you  know." 

And  I  felt  suddenly  that  my  manners  had 
been  deficient,  and  that  conventions  here 
were,  for  being  inverted,  no  less  rigorous 
than  in  a  fashionable  apartment  at  Neuilly. 
The  woman  was,  of  course,  a  counterfeit 
bohemian,  but  it  is  in  caricatures  that  one 
most  readily  sees  the  truth. 

I  do  not  assert  that  bohemianism  does  not 
exist;  I  think,  indeed,  that  it  does  some- 
times, very  delightfully.   But  I  do  assert  that, 

[  7o] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

whether  attained  or  only  played  at,  it  is  an 
artificial  state.  And,  after  all,  even  at  its  best, 
what  charm  has  bohemianism  but  the  charm 
of  friendship  ?  That  a  group  of  light-hearted 
young  men  should  live  in  common,  reliev- 
ing the  temporary  poverty  of  one,  or  profiting 
by  the  prosperity  of  another,  of  their  num- 
ber, —  this  is  external,  merely  an  expression 
of  the  loyal,  affectionate  intimacy  that  unites 
them.  In  every  quarter  of  the  world,  I  am 
sure,  there  are  little  circles  of  friends  whose 
outlook  on  life  is  as  buoyant,  and  whose  de- 
votion to  one  another  as  warm  and  generous. 
Is  there  any  less  charm  in  their  relations 
because  they  do  not  live  in  common,  are 
not  obliged  to  share  one  another's  belong- 
ings, and  happen  not  to  be  poor?  Popularly, 
yes.  A  certain  mist  of  romance  envelops 
friendship  only  when  it  has  these  accompa- 
niments. 

It  was  in  searching  my  mind  for  the  oc- 
casion of  so  curious  a  paradox  that  I  came, 
as  I  thought,  to  an  understanding  of  the  true 

[7i  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

nature  of  bohemianism.  Until  now  I  had 
been  groping,  aware  that  I  had  not  reached 
the  heart  of  the  subject ;  but  now  I  under- 
stood: bohemianism  was  a  literary  ideal.  The 
word  "  romance  "  should  have  given  me  the 
clue  before;  for  romance  is  always  literary. 
In  American  cities  romance  is  popularly 
supposed  to  exist  in  the  country,  because  the 
inhabitants  of  the  cities  have  seen  "The  Old 
Homestead"  or  read  "David  Harum."  In 
the  North  romance  is  supposed  to  exist  in 
the  South,  because  northerners  have  read 
"Colonel  Carter"  or  seen  "In  Old  Ken- 
tucky." So  with  bohemianism:  there  is  a 
halo  about  its  hand-to-mouth  existence,  be- 
cause we  have  read  of  it  in  the  glowing  pages 
of  Murger's  "  La  Vie  de  Boheme  " ;  there  is 
a  splendor  in  its  poverty,  because  we  have 
seen  it  transfigured  in  Puccini's  opera.  And 
those  who  have  not  seen  or  read  fall  easily 
into  the  mood  of  those  who  have.  The  pov- 
erty of  bohemianism  as  it  is  dreamed  of  is 
a  literary  poverty,  its  haphazard  existence  a 

[  72] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

literary  one.  It  is  of  these  delusions  that  the 
cult  is  made;  for  friendship  and  optimism, 
—  all  that  is  real,  all  that  gives  a  charm  to 
actual  bohemianism,  —  there  is  no  enthusi- 
asm. 

I  have  a  friend  who  objects  to  "La  Vie 
de  Boheme"  as  it  is  produced  at  the  Opera 
Comique,  because,  he  says,  there  is  too 
much  ostentation  in  the  poverty,  too  much 
luxury  in  the  squalor.  He  is  wrong.  There 
should  be  luxury  and  ostentation.  This  bo- 
hemianism is  literary.  There  is  no  glamour 
about  real  poverty;  it  is  bitter  and  hard  to 
endure.  The  close  common  existence,  in  a 
two-room  apartment  or  a  studio,  of  three  or 
four  young  men  honestly  striving  to  achieve 
something  creative,  is  cramping  to  each : 
for  each  is  an  individualist,  or  this  is  not  true 
bohemianism.  Those  families  are  the  hap- 
piest, and  the  only  ones  with  an  esprit  de 
corps,  in  which  the  right  of  each  member 
to  be  alone  when  he  pleases,  and  to  have 
unquestioned  his  separate  interests,  is  con- 

[  73  ] 


'The  Book  of  Paris 

ceded.  No  friends  can  be  constantly  to- 
gether day  after  day  without  undergoing  a 
revulsion  of  feeling  toward  one  another;  and 
the  closer  the  intimacy  the  sharper  the  reac- 
tion. The  pressure  of  personality  is  deaden- 
ing and  exasperating.  It  may  be  one  reason 
for  the  greater  prevalence  of  wife-murders 
among  the  poor  than  among  the  rich.  No, 
in  actual  bohemianism,  friendship  and  op- 
timism do  not  gain  an  added  lustre  from  the 
peculiar  conditions  under  which  they  exist, 
but  shine  in  spite  of  them.  They  alone  are 
genuinely  beautiful;  the  charm  of  all  the 
rest  is  fiction,  —  de  la  litterature. 

The  word  "disillusionment"  no  longer 
means  simply  having  got  rid  of  illusions,  but 
stands  to-day  for  the  tired,  dull,  and  unen- 
thusiastic  state  of  mind  of  one  who  with  his 
illusions  has  lost  his  faith  and  his  interest. 
And  how  much  disillusionment  is  caused  by 
the  attempt  to  apply  literary  ideals  to  life  ! 
That  romantic  boys  and  girls  should  come 
to  Paris   expecting  to  find  Mimis  and  Ru- 

[  74  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

dolphes  and  Musettes  in  Montmartre  or  the 
Quartier  Latin,  —  this  is  crude,  of  course:  it 
is  like  looking  for  Puss-in-Boots  or  the  Jab- 
berwock;  but  it  is  symbolic  of  what  we  are 
all  continually  doing,  even  when  we  know 
better.  Our  minds  are  stocked  with  literary 
ideals  that  we  are  forever  trying  to  apply  to 
life.  Literary  friendship,  literary  love,  lit- 
erary heroes  and  villains,  —  we  go  hunting 
them  up  and  down;  and  when  we  have 
found  only  real  friendship,  which  is  too  re- 
served, and  real  love,  which  is  too  human, 
and  neither  heroes  nor  villains  anywhere, 
what  can  result  but  disillusionment,  unless 
we  have  the  faculty  of  self-deceit  to  con- 
vince us  that  what  we  have  found  is  what 
we  sought,  or  intervals  of  sanity  when  we 
see  with  amusement  the  absurdity  of  such  a 
quest,  and  fall  back  on  our  true  ideals  ?  For 
true  ideals  do  not  fail  one.  We  never  com- 
pletely realize  them,  but  following  them 
intermittently,  as  most  of  us  do  in  these 
lucid   periods,   we  feel   reality   grow  con- 

[  75  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

stantly  richer  and  more  significant  of  them. 
The  man  of  forty  sees  touches  of  beauty 
everywhere  that  he  could  not  have  seen  at 
twenty. 

Reflecting  now  in  one  of  these  lapses 
from  literature,  I  saw  that  it  was  surely  not 
at  Montmartre  I  should  find  my  home.  A 
room  or  two  in  a  creaking  garret  with  a 
view  of  roofs  and  chimney-pots ;  weeks  of 
fasting,  starred  occasionally  by  nights  of  riot- 
ous luxury ;  random  mistresses  lightly  taken 
and  as  lightly  dropped,  —  I  enumerated  for 
the  sake  of  thoroughness  the  conditions  of 
the  life ;  but  I  faced  them  as  facts,  and  they 
held  no  enchantment.  I  might  put  these 
things  and  myself  into  a  book,  and  make,  if 
I  did  it  well  enough,  a  very  pretty  unorigi- 
nal story;  but  just  as  surely  as  the  /  of  the 
book  would  be  a  fictional,  adapted,  expur- 
gated /,  so  surely  would  these  things  be  not 
themselves  but  their  literary  counterparts. 
As  reality,  they  were  unattractive,  vulgar 
and  a  trifle  sordid.    There  may  sometimes 

[  76] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

be  little  poetry  in   wealth;  there  is  none 
in  poverty. 

When  I  had  left  the  restaurant,  I  wandered 
for  conscience'  sake  a  little  longer  through 
these  shabby  streets,  but  perfunctorily;  and 
at  the  Place  Clichy  I  climbed  to  the  imperiale 
of  one  of  the  motor-buses  that  ply  between 
that  square  and  the  Odeon.  To  the  amateur 
of  sensations  these  new  engines  that  tear 
shrieking  through  once  tranquil  little  streets, 
scattering  passers-by  frantically  to  left  and 
right,  and  leaving  behind  them  a  universal 
sense  of  miraculous  escape  from  death,  are  a 
joy,  combining  the  excitement  of  a  perilous 
pastime  with  the  advantage  of  usefulness ;  but 
to  the  philosopher  they  are  too  perturbing. 
"Now,  there  is  a  house,"  he  says  to  himself, 
"that  is  an  excellent  example  of  its  epoch. 
It  would  be  interesting  to  note  whether 
over  the  door  —  ";  but  the  house  is  gone. 
"  Strange  that  for  so  many  years  that  monu- 
ment should  have  remained  —  " ;  but  a  sharp 
turning  of  a  corner   throws   him   panting 

[  77  1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

against  the  rail  of  safety,  and  his  thought  is 
forever  lost  to  the  world. 

A  thousand  objects  of  interest  flashed 
swiftly  into  sight  and  as  swiftly  disappeared 
as  we  rushed  noisily  down  the  hill  from 
Montmartre  ;  but  though  I  looked  back  re- 
gretfully, I  kept  my  seat.  A  man  whose  mind 
is  both  inconsequential  and  reflective  must 
sometimes  take  motor-buses  in  Paris,  or  he 
would  never  get  anywhere.  A  moment's  stop 
on  the  Boulevard  des  Italiens  and  we  swept 
into  the  rue  de  Richelieu,  formerly  a  peace- 
ful meditative  street,  rendered  intolerable  and 
ridiculous  now  by  the  tumultuous  passage  of 
these  new  monsters.  The  street  has  the  air 
of  a  venerable  white-haired  man  gone  sud- 
denly and  boisterously  mad.  All  that  should 
normally  have  lent  it  dignity,  —  the  vast  Na- 
tional Library  Building,  the  allegorical  Fon- 
taine de  Richelieu,  —  only  serves  to  heighten 
its  present  absurdity.  Alone  the  statue  of  Mo- 
liere  seems  still  appropriate.  The  great  hu- 
morist would  have  loved  this  incongruity  of 

[  78] 


Old  Passage,  Palais  Royal 


»iu»  m^0*'>»  Miu  HP*. 


/  Choose  My  Home 

aspect  and  behavior ;  while  as  to  the  memo- 
ries so  rudely  disregarded,  he  always  cared 
less  for  such  things  than  for  living  humanity ; 
and  the  rue  de  Richelieu  is  very  human. 

At  the  farthest  corner  of  the  Palais  Royal 
we  paused  for  an  instant  —  if  one  may  call 
this  panting,  roaring,  vibrating  absence  of 
motion  a  pause  —  to  permit  a  new  inrush  of 
passengers,  and  I  let  my  eyes  wander  plea- 
santly over  the  familiar  unpretentious  archi- 
tecture of  the  Comedie  Francaise.  For  some 
years  already  the  preeminence  of  this  oldest 
among  Parisian  play-houses  has  been  but  a 
tradition.  So  far  as  I  am  concerned,  there  are 
at  least  four  other  theatres  I  had  rather  fre- 
quent than  the  Francaise,  which,  under  the 
too  civilized  academic  direction  of  Monsieur 
Claretie,  has  become  a  splendid  mausoleum 
of  art,  where  a  glacial  perfection  of  detail  in 
acting  has  supplanted  the  genuine  portrayal 
of  emotions,  and  where  one  may  go  to  see 
an  admirable  modern  drama  and  come  away, 
as  I  did  from  the  "Amoureuse"  of  George 

C  79  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

de  Porto-Riche,  convinced  of  having  wit- 
nessed a  very  stupid  piece.  But  so  much  of 
its  splendid  past  still  clings  about  the  Come- 
die  Francaise  that  one  is  unable  to  gaze  at  it 
without  a  real  affection. 

I  dropped  my  eyes,  as  the  bus  lurched  for- 
ward again,  to  the  graceful  statue  of  de 
Musset  and  his  muse  that  occupies  the  corner 
in  front  of  the  theatre.  "  It  is  very  delicate 
and  beautiful,"  I  reflected,  "but  with  rather 
too  personal  and  intimate  a  charm  for  its  situ- 
ation.   Set  thus  in  a  public  square  it  is  like  a 

Mozart  quartet  .  .  .  played  in  a  vast  .  •  •  concert-hall." 
"There  !  "  I  said,  shaking  my  fist  at  the 
motor-bus,  —  shaking  it  figuratively,  that  is 
to  say ;  actually  I  was  clinging  with  both 
hands  to  the  seat, — "  I  did  finish  that  thought 
in  spite  of  you  ! '  But  the  motor-bus  only 
rattled  callously  on,  into  the  noble  court  of 
the  Louvre,  out  again  on  the  other  side,  and 
across  the  Seine  by  the  Pont  du  Carrousel  to 
the  Quai  Voltaire.  Here,  having  somehow 
descended  the  perilous  narrow  stairs  from 

[80] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

the  imp'eriale  to  the  ground,  I  left  the  bus  — 
which  promptly  roared  itself,  with  a  final 
diminuendo  of  hoots,  out  of  my  life  —  and 
turned  by  the  rue  des  Saints-Peres  and  the 
rue  de  Verneuil  into  the  old  and  aristocratic 
quarter  known  as  the  Faubourg  Saint-Ger- 
main. 

One  of  the  most  delightful  characteristics 
of  Paris  is  the  great  variety  it  offers.  Most 
cities  are  divided  into  sections  that  are  re- 
spectively rich  or  poor,  banal  or  brilliant, 
picturesque  or  dull ;  but  in  Paris  every  quar- 
tier  has  its  peculiar  individuality,  which  no 
external  resemblance  of  conformation  or 
architecture  can  make  it  share  with  another. 
The  district  of  narrow  involved  streets  about 
the  Pantheon  is  as  different  in  character  from 
the  He  de  la  Cite,  as  the  He  de  la  Cite  from  the 
Boulevard  des  Italiens,  and  the  Boulevard  des 
Italiens  as  different  from  the  Boulevard  Se- 
bastopol  as  any  one  of  them  is  from  the 
Champs  Elysees.  Among  them  all  the  most 
distinctively  individual  is  the  Faubourg  Saint- 

[  81   ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

Germain.  It  seems,  like  Poe's  "  House  of 
Usher,"  to  have  a  physical  atmosphere  of  its 
own  with  which  the  wanderer  in  the  quarter 
feels  himself  enveloped  and  penetrated,  as 
with  dampness  or  cold.  There  had  been  no 
reverence  in  my  admiration  for  the  luxury 
of  the  Boulevard  Maillot,  no  deference  in 
my  attitude  toward  the  poverty  of  Montmar- 
tre;  but  here  I  felt  suddenly  humbled  and 
inferior.  I  despised  myself  for  the  sensation, 
but  through  no  effort  of  will  or  reason  could 
I  throw  it  off.  I  was  like  the  honest  citizen 
in  the  galleries  of  Versailles,  who  keeps  on 
his  hat  and  hums  an  air  in  an  attempt  to  look 
at  ease,  but  who  grows  with  every  step  more 
painfully  conscious  of  being  out  of  place. 
The  silent  austerity  of  the  rue  de  Lille  and 
the  rue  de  Verneuil  held  for  me  a  profounder 
impression  of  age  than  the  street  of  steps  at 
Montmartre;  for  here  the  impression  was 
not,  as  there,  dependent  on  the  real  or  seem- 
ing antiquity  of  the  houses,  but  on  the  past 
that,  even  if  they  had  been  built  only  a  few 

[  82  ] 


Court  of  the  Louvre 


v- 


C 


ll: 


^ 


■■^yi 


.-     i 


'"V* 


rXl.     fc     • 


I 


,L:~; 


i  H 


.1 


jj'if 


4 


*r    wry 

-  ■  \ 


/  Choose  My  Home 

years  ago,  —  as  some  of  them  doubtless  were, 
— they  symbolized ;  a  past  splendid  but  crush- 
ing, intoxicating  but  hopelessly  aloof.  A  child 
reading  a  fairy-tale  becomes  the  prince,  a 
man  reconstructing  in  his  fancy  scenes  from 
a  vanished  epoch  of  history  sees  himself  an 
actor  in  them ;  yet,  though  I  pictured  to  my- 
self, so  vividly  that  my  heart  beat  faster,  this 
quarter  as  it  must  have  been  a  century  and  a 
half  ago :  the  gardens  that  swept  then  from 
the  houses  clear  to  the  river,  and  how  they 
would  have  looked  on  the  afternoon  of  some 
forgotten  May,  filled  with  idle  lords  and 
gracious  ladies,  —  the  Court  being  perhaps  at 
Paris  for  a  few  days,  —  I  could  not  imagine 
myself  a  part  of  the  gay  rout,  but  only  an  out- 
sider pressing  my  forehead  hungrily  against 
a  grating  in  the  effort  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
Pompadour,  and  struggling  for  my  place 
among  the  canaille  who  fought  together, 
hummed  snatches  of  uncomplimentary  songs 
apropos  of  the  king's  having  taken  a  mistress 
who  was  born  a  bourgeoise,  and  were  beaten 

[  83  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

away  from  time  to  time  by  contemptuous 
lackeys.  It  was  the  same  with  the  present. 
In  my  search  for  a  home  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Germain  was  the  only  quarter  in  Paris  to  the 
life  of  which  I  could  not  even  fancy  myself 
as  belonging.  Strange  how  insurmountable 
seem  the  barriers  of  caste  which  men  them- 
selves set  up,  and  how  much  more  insignifi- 
cant we  feel  before  the  artificial  superiority 
of  aristocracy  than  before  the  real  superior- 
ity of  genius!  I  could  unblushingly  imagine 
meeting  Shakespeare,  yet  I  could  not  project 
myself  mentally  into  either  the  past  or  the 
present  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Germain. 

The  thought  of  its  sombre  present  held 
me,  however,  as  I  walked  along  the  gray 
silent  streets  where  my  footsteps  resounded 
as  in  a  corridor.  I  knew  that  the  walled-in, 
imposing  exterior  of  every  other  one  of 
these  mansions  was  like  the  expressionless 
face  of  the  proud  man  who  is  suffering. 
Behind  the  heavy  doors  there  would  be  bare 
lofty  salons,  cold  even  in  summer,  only  one 

[  84  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

of  which  would  there  be  any  attempt  to  heat 
—  and  that  but  scantily  with  a  meagre  care- 
ful fire — in  winter.  The  life  within  would 
be  very  simple  and  not  without  its  charm; 
for  in  these  houses  the  privileges  which 
under  the  old  regime  were  accepted  as  a 
matter  of  course,  have  become,  now  that 
they  are  irrevocably  lost,  passionate  tenets  of 
faith.  Apart  from  that  degenerate  fortune- 
hunting  fraction  by  which  alone  we  Ameri- 
cans know  the  titled  classes  of  France,  — 
but  which  one  need  not  consider,  since  it  al- 
most invariably  dies  out  in  the  generation 
following  the  one  that  sees  its  decay,  —  the 
remnant  of  the  old  nobility  in  Paris  lives 
with  a  rigorous  simplicity  of  manners  un- 
discoverable  elsewhere.  Things  have  been 
turned  topsy-turvy  in  more  ways  than  one. 
This  caste,  which  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  composed  of  skeptics  crediting  no- 
thing and  accepting  the  conventions  of 
Catholicism  off-hand  merely  as  among  the 
polite   forms  to  which  a  gentleman    must 

[  85  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

acquiesce,  is  in  the  twentieth  century  the 
only  one  with  an  earnest  faith  in  religion ; 
whereas  the  great  middle  class,  which  then 
accepted  all  it  was  told,  now  (this  is  true  of 
Paris,  not  of  the  provinces)  believes  in  no- 
thing. The  bourgeoisie  has  lost  convictions; 
the  aristocracy  has  gained  them.  Behind  the 
walls  of  the  residences  in  the  rue  Saint 
Dominique  and  the  rue  del'Universite  there 
would  be  a  life  nearly  as  austere  as  that  of 
ancient  Rome.  But  despite  its  rigidity  it 
held  a  fascination  for  me.  A  lost  cause  has 
always  a  certain  charm;  and  the  cause  of 
French  aristocracy  is  so  hopelessly  lost  that 
devotion  to  it  holds  the  beauty  of  a  young 
girl's  Utopian  dreams.  What  furious  ideal- 
ism it  must  demand  for  one  to  speak  with 
a  reverent  inclination  of  the  head  and  a 
hushed  voice  of  the  gross,  petty,  and  com- 
monplace man  who  represents  the  House  of 
Orleans ! 

I  do  not   think  that,   had   I   been  able 
to  imagine  myself  a  part  of  it,   I   should 

[  36] 


In  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain 


' 


/  Choose  My  Home 

have  liked  the  life  of  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Germain.  There  would  have  been  too  many- 
things  I  must  not  do,  too  little  liberty  of 
thought,  too  many  opinions  handed  to  me 
ready-made  for  acceptance,  too  artificially 
sharp  a  distinction  between  right  and  wrong, 
too  firm  a  belief  in  one  standard  of  morality 
for  all  men,  —  in  short,  too  little  chance  for 
individualism.  Anatole  France  would  not  be 
read  here,  nor  spoken  of  except  bitterly. 
That  would  be  hard.  I  do  not  think  I  should 
have  liked  the  life,  —  but  I  shall  never  know. 
The  Boulevard  Saint-Germain  cuts  diag- 
onally through  the  centre  of  the  faubourg. 
I  had  crossed  it  twice  in  wandering  about  the 
quarter,  but  on  a  third  encounter  I  turned 
into  it  and  so  away  from  the  life  of  which 
I  was  not  a  part.  The  Boulevard  Saint-Ger- 
main is  not  like  other  boulevards.  For  all  its 
animation,  there  is  about  it — at  least  about 
the  part  that  lies  between  the  river  and  the 
rue  des  Saints-Peres,  —  an  air  of  discreet 
respectability.    If   it   could   talk,  it   would 

[  37] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

speak  in  low  tones,  enunciating  distinctly. 
It  is  not  itself  aristocratic,  but  it  is  like  a 
tradesman  who  all  his  life  has  dealt  with 
aristocracy  and  acquired  something  of  its 
deportment.  I  walked  along  it  with  slow 
steps  in  the  direction  of  the  Quartier  Latin, 
looking  up  at  the  walls  which  at  this  hour 
turned  from  gray  to  soft  brown,  and  the 
windows  that  shone  golden  in  the  slanting 
sunlight.  The  tingling  exhilaration  of  the 
morning  was  gone;  but  there  was  a  differ- 
ent charm  in  the  placid  warmth  of  the 
spring  afternoon,  no  less  sweet  for  the  touch 
of  melancholy  one  felt  in  it.  It  maybe  that 
age,  which  seems  to  me  now  so  bitter,  un- 
fair and  impotent  an  end,  holds  for  him  who 
has  reached  it  a  similar  reminiscent  beauty 
that  he  would  not  exchange  for  the  radiant 
buoyancy  of  youth.  But  I  am  not  sure.  The 
little  old  man  with  a  skull-cap  who  lives 
alone  in  the  apartment  opposite  mine  at 
Passy,  who  knocks  timidly  at  my  door  some- 
times and  comes  in  for  a  few  minutes  to 

[88] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

smoke  a  cigarette  or  two,  told  me  once,  with 
a  wistful  smile,  that  he  understood  Faust's 
selling  his  soul  to  the  devil  to  be  young 
again. 

With  the  mood  of  this  gentle  spring  after- 
noon the  bustling  life  of  the  Quartier  Latin 
would  have  been  out  of  keeping,  so  I  left 
the  boulevard  opposite  the  old  church  of 
Saint-Germain-des-Pres,  and  turned  after  five 
minutes  more  of  wandering  into  one  of  the 
little  streets  leading  from  the  Place  Saint- 
Sulpice  to  the  Luxembourg  Gardens.  It  was 
very  narrow,  scarcely  wider  than  an  alley, 
and  despite  the  low  hum  that  reached  it  from 
the  great  square  I  had  just  quitted,  more 
reposeful  than  the  quieter  streets  of  the 
Faubourg  Saint-Germain;  for  in  it  one  felt 
immediately  at  his  ease.  The  eccentricities 
of  its  architecture  showed  that  its  past  had 
been  too  varied  to  have  become  a  cult  for 
its  present.  Midway  in  its  brief  course  I 
stopped  for  a  more  leisurely  contemplation  of 
the  democratic  incongruity  in  the  buildings 

[  89] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

opposite.  Between  a  vast  barn-like  structure 
that  I  could  not  classify,  and  a  hybrid  three- 
story  affair  crowned  with  a  studio,  was  a  di- 
minutive faded  house,  covered  with  delicate 
ornamentation,  and  dating  surely  from  the 
Renaissance,  —  dilapidated  but  coquettish 
still,  like  some  little  old  lady  of  seventy 
who,  yet  youthful  in  spirit,  should  retain 
the  mincing  graces  of  seventeen. 

On  my  own  side  a  high  wall  ran  nearly 
the  whole  length  of  the  street.  Anywhere 
else  I  should  have  known  logically  what  it 
concealed,  but  here  in  this  anomalous  street 
and  this  indeterminate  quarter  that  was  in 
theory  the  Quartier  Latin,  and  yet  not  it  nor 
definitely  any  other  in  spirit,  there  was  no 
telling,  —  a  convent  perhaps,  or  a  school,  or 
anything  else.  Just  ahead  there  was  a  high 
gate  in  the  wall;  but  this  did  not  help  me, 
for  its  bars  were  covered  with  sheet-iron  to 
a  point  at  least  a  foot  above  my  head.  I  was 
in  truth  only  mildly  curious,  and  content  to 
stand  here  for  a  moment,  sniffing  at  the  per- 

[90] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

fume  of  lilacs  that  came  to  me  from  what 
direction  I  did  not  know.  But  it  was  this 
pause  that  brought  the  keenest  enjoyment 
of  the  whole  day  to  me  and  some  measure 
of  success  to  my  search ;  for  as  I  stood  there 
the  gate  in  the  wall  opened  and  a  woman 
came  out.  I  saw  then  whence  the  perfume 
had  come;  for  she  wore  a  great  bunch  of 
the  fragrant  blue  flowers  at  her  belt.  She 
passed  quite  close  to  me,  with  rapid  youth- 
ful steps,  and  as  she  did  so  raised  her  eyes  to 
mine  in  one  swift  glance,  and  as  quickly 
dropped  them.  They  were,  I  observed,  a 
deep  blue  in  color.  I  do  not  know  why  I 
noticed  this,  —  probably  because  they  har- 
monized so  well  with  the  lilacs  she  carried. 
There  is,  I  assure  you,  no  romance  con- 
nected with  the  personality  of  the  young 
woman.  She  turned  the  corner  at  the  Place 
Saint-Sulpice  and  I  never  saw  her  again.  But 
she  was  of  importance  to  me  nevertheless ; 
for  in  passing  out  she  had  left  the  gate  in 
the  wall  open,  — -  oh,  the  merest  crack,  but 

[9i  1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

enough  so  that  by  bringing  my  eyes  very 
close  (and  perhaps  by  pushing  the  iron  door 
just  a  trifle  farther  inward),  I  could  see 
something  of  what  lay  beyond  the  wall. 

Set  far  back  in  the  enclosure  rose  a  great 
house,  —  how  large  I  could  not  tell,  since 
the  inadequacy  of  the  opening  through  which 
I  gazed  permitted  me  only  a  narrow  re- 
stricted view  ;  for  all  I  know,  the  house  may 
have  stretched  out  indefinitely  in  either  di- 
rection. The  walls,  in  the  patches  that 
showed  near  the  high  roof,  were  a  soft 
gray  in  tone  ;  everywhere  else  they  were 
concealed  by  a  mass  of  sunny  green  ivy, 
across  which  rippled  waves  of  shadow  in 
the  afternoon  breeze.  From  the  foot  of  the 
tall  quaintly-carved  double-door,  sheltered 
above  by  one  of  those  overhanging  marquises 
that  lend  a  dignified  charm  to  the  most  banal 
entrances,  three  worn  granite  steps  descended 
to  the  garden,  which  filled  the  wide  space 
between  the  gate  and  the  house,  and  con- 
tinued to  left  and  right, —  how  far,  I  could 

[92] 


I  Choose  My  Home 

only  guess.  It  was  formal,  as  small  gardens 
should  be;  but  in  its  well-balanced  flower- 
beds there  was  such  a  tangle  of  roses,  such 
a  confusion  of  lilac-bushes,  that  its  conven- 
tionality did  not  in  the  least  affect  its  natu- 
ralness, and  was  no  more  to  be  regretted 
than  good  manners  in  a  woman.  Just  at  the 
limit  of  my  vision  on  either  side  rose  a  small 
carved  pillar,  supporting  a  marble  jar  from 
which  slender  vines  trailed  downward  with 
a  delicate  irregular  grace;  and,  as  I  looked, 
these  two  columns  took  on  to  my  imagina- 
tion the  aspect  of  guardians  refusing  me  ad- 
mittance to  the  paradises  beyond  them.  I 
longed  to  push  the  gate  farther  for  a  wider 
view,  but  to  have  done  so  would,  I  was  sure, 
have  brought  down  a  wrathful  gardener  to 
close  it  with  a  slam,  and  so  take  away  what 
I  already  possessed. 

It  seemed  to  me,  as  I  stood  gazing  and 
drawing  deep  breaths  of  the  fragrance  the 
white  and  purple  lilacs  wafted  to  me,  that  I 
had  known  this  place  a  long  time.    It  was 

[93  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

less  as  though  it  were  the  house  I  should 
choose,  than  one  that  had  always  been  mine. 
What  kind  of  people,  I  wondered,  lived 
within  the  ivy-covered  walls  and  wandered 
at  morning  through  the  pleasant  paths  of  the 
garden?  I  was  puzzled,  and  the  next  mo- 
ment after  glad  to  have  been  so.  That  was 
it,  —  they  would  not  be  of  a  kind,  but  un- 
classified, like  the  house,  the  garden,  and  the 
quarter  itself;  people  with  a  few  aristocrats 
among  their  ancestors,  to  give  them  the  hor- 
ror of  vulgarity,  and  that  rare  gentle  distinc- 
tion of  manner  which  cannot  be  acquired, 
but  with  a  preponderance  of  honest  bourgeois 
to  keep  these  things  only  the  leaven  they 
should  be;  with  just  enough  money  to  save 
their  aristocracy  from  absurdity,  and  not 
enough  to  permit  of  their  bourgeoisie  s  be- 
coming pompous.  The  longer  I  looked,  the 
surer  I  grew  that  people  of  ideas  must  live  in 
this  place;  and  the  only  people  who  can 
have  more  than  the  mere  beginning  of  ideas 
(which  they  either  do  not  know  how,  or  are 

[94  ] 


/  Choose  My  Home 

afraid,  to  follow  to  a  conclusion)  are  those 
who  belong  definitely  to  no  caste;  for  the 
characteristics  of  caste  are  prejudices,  con- 
ventions, and  convictions ;  and  ideas  that 
have  grown  up  amid  such  surroundings  are 
warped  and  stunted  indeed. 

About  this  garden  there  was  a  charm 
which  was  not  merely  that  of  gardens  in 
general,  but  something  fresh  and  personal. 
I  felt  no  jealousy  of  the  people  who  lived 
here.  If  they  were  what  I  imagined  them,  I 
was  glad  of  their  presence.  But  it  seemed 
unjust  that  I  could  not  see  the  wings  of  the 
house,  or  what  of  garden  lay  beyond  the  two 
columns  with  their  pots  of  trailing  ferns. 
After  all  it  was  my  house  and  my  garden, — 
not  materially,  it  is  true,  but  in  the  finer 
sense  that  a  thought  in  a  book,  or  a  sudden 
mood  in  the  music  of  a  symphony,  touching 
something  identical  in  my  own  nature,  is 
mine. 

Then  all  at  once  I  understood.  (Dullard  ! 
to  have  been  so  long  about  it ! )   It  was  just 

[  95  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

this  incompleteness  that  made  the  whole 
magic  of  the  place.  It  is  the  bungling  writer 
who  describes  his  heroine;  the  wise  novelist 
says  only  that  she  was  beautiful.  In  all  the 
world  there  was  not  a  garden  so  lovely  as 
that  my  fancy  created  out  of  the  fragment 
given  me.  Not  for  the  certainty  that  no  irate 
gardener  existed,  would  I  have  pushed  the 
gate  wider  open  now.  This  should  be  my 
house  and  my  garden,  but  as  they  were,  — 
withdrawn,  only  half-seen.  And  I  reflected, 
as  I  turned  away,  that  in  their  feminine  elu- 
siveness  Paris  herself  was  symbolized.  For 
Paris  is  like  a  woman  one  loves  and  who 
loves  in  return,  prodigal  of  her  affection, 
lavishing  a  thousand  tendernesses  upon  her 
lover,  but  always  with  her  reticences,  her 
hidden  depths  of  soul  of  which  one  gets  only 
wonderful  glimpses  now  and  again.  Like  a 
woman,  she  never  gives  herself  completely  : 
she  loves  always  less  than  she  is  loved; — it 
is  the  secret  of  her  charm. 


At  La  Gaite 


Two  Plays 


r 


L 


IV 


Two  Plays 


EING,  for  some  reason  which 
I  forget,  in  the  rue  Blanche  at 
half-past  eight  of  a  rainy  even- 
ing, I  stopped  across  the  street 
from  the  Theatre  Rejane,  my  eye  caught  by 
the  electric  sign  that  glowed  softly  through 
the  mist.  A  long  line  of  dripping  carriages 
was  moving  slowly  by,  with  intermittent 
stops  before  the  door.  Men,  neutrally  proper 
in  glossy  hats  and  gray-caped  coats,  stepped 
from  them,  and  delicately  gowned  women 
descended  with  the  pretty  gathering  of  skirts 
and  well-bred  air  of  contempt  for  the 
weather,  which  make  one  wish  all  theatre 
nights  wet.  I  am  continually  amazed  at  the 
grace  with  which  women  get  out  of  car- 
riages, at  their  almost  universal   ability  to 

[99] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

assume  that  slight  haughtiness,  that  pleas- 
ant sophistication,  which  raise  the  act  to  an 
art.  Most  of  those  whom  I  was  watching  I 
recognized  as  pretenders,  members  of  the 
enormous  class  who  pass  their  time  in  mak- 
ing believe,  in  trying  to  convince  the  casual 
observer  in  the  street  that  they  are  of  the 
vrai  monde.  And  yet  I  am  not  sure  that  it 
was  not  they  who  did  it  the  best.  Acting, 
after  all,  is  more  effective  than  reality. 

I  hesitated,  but  the  thought  that  I  had 
never  seen  Madame  Simone  decided  me. 
Madame  Simone  le  Bargy  she  had  been  until 
recently,  wife  of  the  eminent  actor  who  sets 
the  fashion  for  Paris  in  cravats.  (There 
would  be  sadness  in  the  reflection  that  it  is 
to  an  actor  —  even  though  he  be  of  the 
Comedie  Francaise  —  that  Paris  goes  now 
for  so  important  a  service,  if  the  individual 
did  not  vanish  before  the  principle.  The  idea 
of  one  man's  being  felt  to  dictate  a  mode 
for  London  or  New  York  is  unimaginable. 
Such  a  thing  is  possible  only  here  ;  and  it  is 

[  ioo  ] 


Entrance  to  a  "  BaV 


Two  Plays 

the  symbol  of  a  unity,  an  almost  family  feel- 
ing, a  kind  of  splendid  narrowness,  which 
makes  Paris  a  village  in  sentiment,  and  gives 
a  homogeneity  even  to  its  literature.)  Mon- 
sieur le  Bargy  —  why,  I  do  not  remember, 
but  doubtless  for  the  best  of  reasons  —  di- 
vorced his  wife,  upon  which  she  brought 
suit  to  be  allowed  still  to  carry  her  married 
name,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  she  at  least 
as  much  as  her  husband  who  had  made  it 
famous,  and  that  to  deprive  her  of  what  she 
had  herself  rendered  of  value  was  unjust.  It 
was  a  novel  point  of  view,  and  made  Paris 
smile;  but  legally  it  did  not  prevail,  and  she 
lost  her  suit.  For  some  time  she  appeared 
in  the  programs  as  "Madame  Simone,  ex 
le  Bargy";  but  eventually  that  also  was 
refused  her,  and  she  became  plain  Madame 
Simone. 

Within,  the  warmth  and  light  of  the  thea- 
tre, the  most  beautiful  in  Paris,  greeted  me 
pleasantly,  and  I  settled  comfortably  into  the 
seat  which  the  rainy  night,  or  perhaps  the 

[  ioi  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

fact  that  the  season  was  nearing  its  close,  had 
left  me  without  difficulty  of  obtaining.  The 
play  was  "  La  Rafale  "  of  Bernstein,  false  and 
morbid  like  the  rest  of  that  author's  dramas, 
but  constructed  with  a  skill  and  certainty  that 
made  one  put  aside  his  disapproval  to  admire 
the  art  of  the  work. 

It  is  not,  however,  with  "  La  Rafale"  that 
I  am  concerned  here,  but  with  the  curtain- 
raiser.  It  bore  the  biblical  title  of"  La  Fille 
de  Jephte,"  and  it  dealt  with  a  young  wife 
who,  by  the  force  of  her  innocence  and  girl- 
ishness,  reclaimed  her  husband  from  the 
clever  and  experienced  woman  of  the  world, 
his  mistress  before  his  marriage,  in  the  end 
utterly  vanquishing  her  redoubtable  rival. 
Further  details  I  will  spare  you.  There  are 
two  kinds  of  plays  that  are  worth  seeing, — 
the  very  good  and  the  very  bad.  All  others 
leave  one  with  the  sense  of  a  wasted  evening ; 
but  it  is  seldom  that  one  sits  through  the 
three  hours  of  a  very  good  or  a  very  bad 
play  without  feeling  germinating  in  his  mind 

[    102    ] 


Two  Plays 

general  ideas  which  will  haunt  him  for  days, 
until,  followed  to  their  conclusion,  they  are 
laid  aside,  —  not  forgotten,  but  become, 
right  or  wrong,  a  part  of  the  conception  one 
makes  for  himself  of  life.  I  think  I  had  never 
seen  anything  so  bad  as  "  La  Fille  de  Jephte." 
Not  that  it  was  vicious;  on  the  contrary  it 
fairly  oozed  virtue.  But  to  me  at  least  it  stood 
splendidly  for  all  that  is  worst  in  the  French 
theatre.  For  the  fact  of  its  immense  superi- 
ority to  ours  and  the  English  theatre  cannot 
blind  one  to  the  recognition  that  the  French 
theatre  too  has  its  faults  and  commits  its 
grave  offences.  But  faults  and  offences  are 
involved  so  speciously  in  the  flawless  tech- 
nique, are  dressed  in  such  an  iridescent  pano- 
ply of  wit,  that  one  might  long  feel  them 
only  in  a  vague  discontent  without  such  keys 
as  "  La  Fille  de  Jephte."  The  wit  of  the 
curtain-raiser  at  the  Theatre  Rejane  was  not 
keen  nor  its  technique  dazzling,  and  I  saw 
in  the  excessive  sweetness  of  the  emotions  so 
freely  expressed  what  had  before  eluded  my 

[  103  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

definition,  the  great  fault  of  the  French  the- 
atre, —  sentimentality. 

Mr.  Locke,  in  his  delightful  book  "  The 
Morals  of  Marcus  Ordeyne,"  observes  that 
we  have  the  richest  language  in  the  world, 
and  use  it  as  though  it  were  the  poorest.  It 
is  perhaps  no  more  than  a  corollary  to  add 
that  it  is  also  the  most  precise  and  used  as  the 
vaguest.  The  beautiful  lucidity  of  French 
prose  is  not  due  so  much  to  the  language  it- 
self as  to  the  mastery  with  which  it  is  handled. 
Our  own  language  can  express  with  precision 
fine  shades  of  meaning  for  which  French  is 
quite  without  an  equivalent ;  but  we  are  un- 
worthy of  our  riches.  We  are  unskilled  work- 
men, puttering  clumsily  with  a  complicated 
and  delicate  machine,  of  whose  possibilities 
we  have  only  a  dim  conception.  One  of  the 
most  vivid  examples  of  the  strange  confusion 
into  which  we  are  always  falling  is  our  lack 
of  appreciation  of  the  distinction  between 
the  words  "sentiment'1  and  "sentimental- 
ity."   There  are  even  people  who  use  "sen- 

[  104  ] 


Two  Play i 


timentality  "  as  though  it  meant  merely  the 
excess  of  sentiment.  And  yet  the  distinc- 
tion is  as  sharp  as  that  between  beauty  and 
ugliness.  Sentimentality  is  simply  false  sen- 
timent. Sentiment  is  the  highest  thing  that 
exists,  sentimentality  the  basest ;  and  the 
failure  to  separate  the  two  forces  clearly  in 
one's  mind  means  misconception  of  a 
thousand  things  in  experience,  —  more  than 
that,  it  means  failure  to  understand  one's 
self. 

A  man  of  sentimentality  is  a  sentimental- 
ist, but  a  man  of  sentiment  has  no  name. 
Sentiment  is  the  highest  thing  in  his  life,  and 
as  much  as  he  can  he  keeps  it  from  sight.  It  is 
not  something  he  can  turn  on  or  off  at  will, 
like  sentimentality.  He  is  not  proud  of  it, 
for  it  does  not  even  belong  to  him;  on  the 
contrary,  he  belongs  to  it.  It  grips  him  and 
shakes  him  when  he  least  expects  it.  He  does 
not  take  pleasure  in  it :  every  touch  of  it  is 
pain.  (And  indeed  it  is  safe  to  say  that,  when- 
ever we  find  ourselves  enjoying  an  emotion, 

[  105  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

we  may  make  up  our  minds  that  it  is  not 
sentiment  but  sentimentality.)  The  attitude 
of  the  sentimentalist  toward  his  sentimen- 
tality is  very  different.  He  talks  about  it 
freely;  he  nurses  it,  and  ministers  to  it  as 
though  it  were  a  child ;  and  when  he  finds 
that  it  has  added  an  inch  or  two  to  its  stature, 
he  sheds  tears  of  joy.  It  exists  not  in  spite  of 
himself,  but  for  himself.  It  is  his  greatest 
pleasure,  —  and  all  the  time  he  parades  it  as 
sentiment. 

I  might  continue,  and  should  no  doubt, 
were  I  not  uneasily  conscious  that  the  divi- 
sion of  the  world  into  men  of  sentiment  and 
sentimentalists  was  artificial  and  only  made 
for  the  sake  of  clearness.  The  world  is  not 
in  truth  so  arbitrarily  or  simply  divided,  any 
more  than  it  is  divided  into  heroes  and  vil- 
lains,—  as  we  love  to  imagine  from  time  to 
time  over  a  fairy-tale.  There  is  in  every  man 
some  sentiment  and  some  sentimentality.  As 
the  one  develops,  the  other  diminishes ;  but 
even  in  the  man  of  profoundest  emotions 

[  106] 


Two  Play  i 


there  is  always  at  least  a  possibility  of  false 
sentiment,  and  even  the  creator  of  Little 
Nell  had  many  moments  of  genuine  feeling. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  said  we  must  un- 
derstand well  the  distinction  between  senti- 
ment and  sentimentality  to  understand  our- 
selves. 

From  this  reason  too  comes  the  difficulty 
of  disentangling  the  thread  of  sentimentality 
in  a  clever  French  play.  The  false  feeling 
so  skilfully  involved  in  the  rapid  dialogue 
of  passing  scenes  appeals  to  the  alloy  in  our 
own  natures  as  insidiously  as  the  dash  of 
rum  in  a  glass  of  punch  to  the  palate  of  a 
total  abstainer.  A  "Fille  de  Jephte"  is  ne- 
cessary to  make  clear  the  depths  of  our  tur- 
pitude. For  it  is  turpitude ;  the  name  is  none 
too  black.  One  has  only  to  consider  how 
lofty  is  the  religious  sense,  to  become  aware 
how  base  is  its  simulation ;  how  painfully 
high  and  pure  is  the  pity  that  sweeps  over 
us  at  times,  —  so  rarely,  —  to  appreciate  how 
ignoble   and    egotistic   is  the   imitation  in 

[  107  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

which  we  indulge  ourselves  —  so  often.  Real 
pity,  as  it  is  the  deepest,  is  the  most  painful 
emotion  we  are  capable  of  experiencing ; 
mock  pity  is  but  an  agreeable  form  of  self- 
flattery.  We  linger  with  a  delicious  sadness 
over  Sterne's  soliloquy  on  the  dead  ass;  but 
there  is  no  pleasure  to  be  felt  from  the  scene 
in  which  Lear  wakes  and  recognizes  Cor- 
delia. It  tears  mercilessly  at  our  profoundest 
passion.  I  think  the  reason  that  the  greatest 
masterpiece  of  drama  is  seldom  seen  on  the 
stage  is  less  that,  as  is  averred,  there  is  no 
one  great  enough  to  act  it,  than  that  people 
do  not  care  to  feel  so  genuinely.  We  re- 
proach our  Puritan  ancestors  with  having 
been  ashamed  of  their  emotions,  and  it  was 
an  unlovely  trait,  — for  genuine  emotions  are 
the  only  things  of  which  one  has  the  certain 
right  not  to  be  ashamed;  but  may  it  not 
have  been  with  them  in  part  the  instinctive 
horror  of  falling  into  false  sentiment?  They 
were  so  unswervingly  honest,  our  ancestors. 
We,  their  descendants,  are  born  into  a  dif- 

[  108  ] 


Two  Plays 

ferent  world,  a  world  less  straightforward, 
more  complex,  where  we  no  longer  know 
what  we  believe,  where  right  and  wrong  are 
tangled  hopelessly,  where  we  cannot  always 
distinguish  truth  from  falsehood  even  in 
ourselves,  where  only  beauty  and  ugliness 
are  still  sharply  separated;  which  is  perhaps 
why  —  but  that  I  must  leave  for  another 
essay. 

To  the  last  ten  minutes  of  the  young 
wife's  triumphant  progress  I  paid  but  a  me- 
chanical attention.  Scenes  from  other  plays 
were  passing  across  my  mind.  This  situation 
which  had  pleased  me  but  left  me  troubled, 
that  conversation  which  even  in  touching  an 
emotion  had  given  me  a  confused  sense  of 
uneasiness,  —  their  falsity  fairly  sprang  out 
at  me  in  this  moment.  And  the  longer  I  re- 
flected, the  more  profoundly  it  seemed  to 
me  that  sentimentality  pervaded  the  French 
theatre.  False  feeling,  besides  being  more 
agreeable,  is  far  easier  of  arousing  than  real 
sentiment.  There  area  hundred  little  tricks  a 

[  109  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

dramatist  knows,  —  tricks  of  climax,  tricks 
of  repetition,  —  that  make  one  catch  one's 
breath,  despite  one's  understanding  them.  I 
have  many  times  felt  tears  rise  quickly  to 
my  eyes  at  some  sudden,  skilful,  and  unex- 
pected turn  in  a  play,  though  all  the  time 
I  was  in  truth  as  calm  and  unmoved  as  I  am 
at  this  moment.  By  striking  one's  knee  one 
can  cause  an  involuntary  motion  of  the  leg ; 
so  by  pulling  certain  mental  strings  in  his 
audience,  a  playwright  can  bring  forth 
laughter  which  has  no  gayety  behind  it,  and 
tears  which  have  no  sadness.  Sentimentality, 
too,  in  which  broad  effects  are  possible,  is  so 
much  more  dramatically  effective  than  sen- 
timent, that  it  is  perhaps  logical  that  the 
dramatist,  for  whom  effect  is  so  essential, 
should  use  it  freely.  But  his  sin  is  none  the 
less  for  all  that.  There  are,  of  course,  seri- 
ous contemporary  French  plays,  such  as 
"Amants"  of  Maurice  Donnay,  which  are 
without  a  taint  of  sentimentality;  but  in 
general  it  is  in  the  lighter,  gayer  plays  — 

[  no  ] 


Street  of  the  Little  Butcher  Shop 


.-v* .      .*"■"»*■  .: 


Two  Plays 

plays  like  "Sa  Soeur"  of  Tristan  Bernard,  or 
the  delightful  "  Miquette  et  Sa  Mere"  of 
Caillavet  and  Robert  de  Flers  —  that  one 
feels  an  untroubled  and  unqualified  enthusi- 
asm for  the  French  theatre. 

Very  different  from  "  La  Fille  de  Jephte," 
yet  throwing  almost  as  much  light  on  an- 
other side  of  the  same  subject,  was  a  play 
which  I  saw  a  few  nights  later,  in  company 
with  a  charming  French  family.  Considered 
retrospectively,  our  choice  of  a  theatre  is  a 
mystery ;  but  there  are  certain  rare  evenings 
when  the  inconsequential  is  the  logical,  and 
at  the  time  I  remember  that  there  seemed 
nothing  strange,  after  failing  to  get  seats  for 
the  Varietes,  in  our  driving  quite  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course  to  the  Folies-Dramatiques.  The 
Folies-Dramatiques  is  what  would  be  called 
in  America  "  The  Home  of  Melodrama  "  ; 
and  as  we  entered,  the  first  act  of  "Les  Ex- 
ploits d'un  Titi  Parisien"  was  drawing  to  a 
throbbing  close.  I  looked  about  in  delight. 
The  house,  crowded  except  for  the  boxes, 

[  in  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

was  breathless  ;  and  the  uppermost  gallery, 
with  the  silent  unreality  of  its  mottled,  dimly- 
seen  background  growing  more  distinct  far- 
ther forward,  and  overflowing  at  the  railing 
into  sharply  outlined  elbows  and  intense, 
straining  faces,  gave  one  the  effect  of  a  cy- 
clorama.  There  wras  no  claque  needed  here. 
The  applause  came  sharp  and  crisp  at  each 
noble  speech  of  the  hero. 

He  was  an  honest  workman,  the  hero,  and 
he  loved  (oh,  but  really  loved, — only  think  of 
it,  Messieurs  Bourget  and  Prevost, — with- 
out once  asking  himself,  "  Do  I  in  truth 
lover"  or  "How  do  I  love?")  a  midinette ;  a 
little  Parisian  seamstress,  who  returned  his 
affection.  But  she  was  a  woman  and  weak. 
Armand  Lafontaine,  the  defaulting  cashier 
of  a  mill,  who  also  loved  her  unhesitatingly, 
offered  passionately  to  share  his  riches  with 
her,  —  an  offer  that  she,  dazzled  with  the 
dream  of  luxury  and  ignorant  of  the  source 
of  his  wealth,  was  not  strong  enough  to  re- 
sist.   Deserting  her  fiance,  she  fled  with  the 

[  112  J 


Two  Play i 


villain  to  England.  How  Petit-Louis,  the 
hero  (described  in  the  programme  as  jeune 
et  brave  ouvrier),  with  Grand- Jean  (son  ami 
devoue},  followed  them  across  the  Channel; 
how  he  was  taken  under  the  protection  of 
Lord  Richard,  an  English  nobleman,  for  a 
service  rendered  to  the  latter's  daughter, 
Miss  Hellen  (spelling  unrevised) ;  how  he 
escaped  the  plots  of  assassination  directed 
against  him ;  how  he  carried  Suzette  back 
to  France;  how  the  villain,  with  an  uncal- 
culating  depth  of  passion  that  I  could  not 
but  admire,  followed  her  at  the  risk  of  his 
liberty,  and  implored  her  to  return  to  him ; 
how,  spurned  scornfully,  he  would  have  mur- 
dered her  had  it  not  been  for  Grand-Jean, 
who  arrived  at  just  the  right  moment;  and 
how  the  railing  of  the  balcony  on  which  the 
two  men  were  struggling,  gave  way,  and 
the  unhappy  cashier  was  precipitated  into 
the  street  below,  —  you  may  still  learn  if  vou 
will  go  to  the  Folies-Dramatiques.  It  was 
amusing  to  observe  here,  too,  naively,  as  in 

[  ii3  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

the  boulevard  plays  ironically,  the  effect  of 
the  entente  cordiale.  The  Englishman  was  no 
longer  le  traitre,  but  a  sort  of  subsidiary  hero. 
There  are  certain  truths  that  no  amount 
of  experience  can  teach  us.  We  should  know, 
for  example,  that  in  any  but  the  subtlest  com- 
parisons of  national  character  we  shall  find 
nine  similarities  to  one  difference,  and  yet 
it  is  always  differences  that  we  expect.  That 
we  should  look  eagerly  for  differences  is  es- 
sential ;  but  that  we  should  expect  them  is 
stupid,  —  which  I  recognized  humbly  in 
finding  myself  surprised  that  "Les  Exploits 
d'un  Titi  Parisien  "  should  so  closely  resem- 
ble an  American  melodrama.  The  only  real 
distinction,  and  one  greatly  to  the  credit  of 
the  French  play,  was  that  not  a  gun  was 
fired,  not  a  bomb  exploded,  not  even  a  rail- 
way train  blown  up.  As  in  American  melo- 
dramas of  the  sort,  the  morality  was  impec- 
cable, and  might  well  serve  as  a  reproach  to 
the  authors  of  more  fashionable  productions. 
It  was  even  suggested  that,  despite  her  week's 

[  H4  ] 


Two  Plays 

sojourn  with  the  villain,  the  heroine  had  re- 
mained virtuous,  but  this  was  not  insisted  on. 

Patience  is  not  a  virtue  that  develops  with 
culture.  No  audience  of  the  Comedie  Fran- 
caise  or  the  Renaissance  would  have  toler- 
ated  the  soliloquies  and  reflections  on  life 
to  which  the  spectators  at  the  Folies-Drama- 
tiques  listened  with  sympathy  and  apprecia- 
tion. "  I  esteem,"  said  the  hero,  his  up-turned 
face  glowing  with  inspiration, "  I  esteem  that 
an  honest  workman  is  of  greater  worth  than 
a  dishonest  man  of  wealth  ! '  The  house 
shook  with  enthusiasm,  and  indeed  one  could 
not  but  feel  that  the  observation  was  re- 
strained and  conservative. 

Obviously  this  too  was  sentimentality,  and 
I  found  myself  wondering  why  I  should  ex- 
perience no  distaste,  but  rather  a  warm  kind- 
liness toward  it;  while  for  "La  Fille  de 
Jephte,"  not  less  crude  in  its  way,  I  had 
had  nothing  but  disapproval.  Was  it,  I  asked 
myself,  simply  that  the  melodrama,  with  its 
situations  at  which  I  did  not  thrill  and  its 

[  ii5  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

grandiloquence  at  which  I  could  only  smile, 
flattered  me  into  a  sense  of  superiority  to 
this  eager  unconscious  public,  who  did  not 
smile  and  who  did  thrill?  Perhaps,  in  part. 
One's  vanity  is  always  lying  in  wait  for  one, 
and  this  particular  phase  —  amused  toler- 
ance— is  so  easily  aroused.  It  is  responsible 
for  most  of  the  child-literature  that  flour- 
ishes in  America  (if  I  had  not  had  "La 
Fille  de  Jephte"  before  my  eyes,  I  should 
have  gone  to  that  to  choose  an  example  of 
the  direst  sentimentality),  and  for  all  of  the 
dialect  plays.  There  was,  however,  another 
and  I  hope  profounder  reason.  Whatever 
one  might  think  of  the  nature  of  the  emo- 
tions in  question,  it  was  beyond  doubt  that 
the  audience  was  feeling  them  sincerely. 
But  it  is  not  an  explanation  to  say  that  what 
is  sentimentality  in  one  man  may  be  senti- 
ment in  another.  Sentiment  is  sentiment, 
and  sentimentality  is  sentimentality.  Who 
set  the  standard  I  do  not  know ;  but  that 
there  is  a  standard  I  cannot  an  instant  doubt. 

[  n6] 


Two  Plays 

We  are  none  of  us  fine  enough  to  distin- 
guish perfectly  at  all  times  between  the  two ; 
but  if  we  are  growing  emotionally,  we  are 
learning  day  by  day  to  do  so  more  nearly. 
And  so,  paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  the 
conclusion  to  which  I  found  myself  forced 
before  the  manifest  integrity  of  this  audi- 
ence, was  that  it  is  possible  to  feel  false  sen- 
timent genuinely. 

Grant  Allen,  in  his  guide  to  Florence, 
tells  one  sternly  that  to  gain  a  first  superficial 
impression  of  Angelico's  "Crucifixion"  one 
should  stand  before  the  great  picture  not  less 
than  an  hour  (as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  only 
the  man  of  rarest  emotional  sustainment  who 
can  look  at  any  work  of  art  for  more  than 
fifteen  minutes  at  a  time  without  losing  all 
sense  of  its  beauty) ;  and  I  shall  never  forget 
the  vision  of  two  maiden  ladies  stationed 
patiently  in  front  of  it,  guide-book  in  hand, 
their  eyes  wandering  vaguely  from  figure  to 
figure,  but  dropping  furtively  from  time  to 
time  to  their  watches.  Hypocrisy  is  nowhere 

[  ii7  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

more  rampant  than  among  tourists  in  Italy; 
and  it  is  with  a  sense  of  relief  that  one  re- 
marks the  sincere  admiration  in  the  faces 
about  a  Bernini  and  the  almost  ecstatic  pleas- 
ure in  those  before  a  Carlo  Dolci.  It  was 
before  a  Carlo  Dolci  that  the  two  maiden 
ladies  of  San  Marco  should  have  been,  for 
whatever  their  age,  —  and  far  from  me  be 
the  impoliteness  of  a  guess,  —  they  were  but 
children  aesthetically.  There  is  no  escaping 
it:  natural  taste  is  bad,  natural  feeling  is 
false.  A  person  of  untrained  emotions  will 
thrill  to  the  mawkishness  of  Mendelssohn's 
"Spring  Song,"  and  remain  unmoved  by  the 
splendor  of  a  Mozart  sonata  not  less  simple 
in  form;  will  pass  by  a  Botticelli,  to  stop 
before  a  Greuze. 

I  remember  that  as  a  child  no  book 
equalled  the  "Arabian  Nights"  in  my  affec- 
tions. Such  statements  as  "He  struck  the 
ground  with  his  foot,  and  the  earth  opened 
beneath  him  disclosing  a  flight  of  steps," 
held  for  me  a  breathless  charm  that  neither 

[  »8] 


Two  Play i 


Hans  Andersen  nor  Grimm  could  give  me ; 
but  I  am  amused,  in  looking  back,  to  find 
that  the  stories  that  I  loved  the  best  were 
invariably  the  feeble  interpolated  ones,  — 
"The  Story  of  the  Three  Sisters,"  for  ex- 
ample. I  know  to-day  that  the  tale  which 
was  my  favorite  among  all  —  "  Prince  Ah- 
med and  the  Fairy  Pari-Banou" — is  weak 
and  insipid  beside  the  splendid  march  of  the 
"  Story  of  the  Third  Calendar."  Normally, 
sentimentality  is  a  step  towards  sentiment. 
There  is  nothing  sad  in  liking  Guido  Reni; 
the  melancholy  thought  is  that  one  should 
continue  to  like  him.  For  the  honest  senti- 
mentality of  a  man  who  is  not  yet  capable 
of  a  higher  emotion,  one  should  feel  respect; 
it  is  when,  as  in  so  many  French  plays,  sen- 
timentality is  refined  and  a  form  of  self- 
indulgence  for  people  who  are  capable  of 
sentiment,  that  it  becomes  intolerable. 

With  the  audience  at  the  Folies-Drama- 
tiques  I  felt  a  friendly  sympathy.  But  for 
my  chance  of  freer  development  and  greater 

[  "9] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

leisure,  all  this  bathos  and  banality  would 
have  been  as  real  to  me  as  to  the  sailor  in 
the  gallery.  Nor  was  the  gulf  between  us  so 
wide  or  impassable.  I  was  of  no  different 
stuff  than  these  people,  —  neither  better  nor 
worse  naturally,  neither  truer  nor  falser.  If 
I  had  grown  away  from  them  somewhat  in 
sentiment, — as  it  would  have  been  unpar- 
donable for  me  not  to  have  done,  —  there 
were  still  a  thousand  mental  fibres  binding 
me  to  them.  "Now,"  I  said  to  myself  over 
and  over  during  the  play,  "I  should  have 
thrilled  with  sorrow;  here  I  should  have 
shuddered  with  apprehension";  and  I  heard 
within  me  faint  and  distant  echoes  of  those 
emotions. 


A  Cocottt 


Au  Bois 


) 


•^  , 


,-  ^ 


V 

Au  Bois 


•  AY,   and  afternoon  —  and  the 
Bois  de  Boulogne ! 

I  am  half  afraid  to  go  on. 
There  are  a  thousand  things  to 
say,  and  yet  I  feel  that  if  I  wrote  a  work  in 
three  volumes  and  said  them  all,  I  might 
look  back  and  think  to  myself  that  they  were 
better  and  more  completely  said  in  those  first 
eight  words.  But  perhaps  you  do  not  know 
the  Bois ;  then  you  will  not  mind  my  amus- 
ing myself  with  just  a  few  of  the  thousand 
things.  Perhaps  again  you  do.  If  so,  two 
courses  of  action  are  open  to  you  :  you  may 
close  the  book  at  once,  or  you  may  read  on 
disapprovingly,  and  frown,  and  say  to  your- 
self, "He  misses  the  spirit  of  the  place"; 
which,  too,  will  not  be  without  its  charm. 

[  I23  ] 


'The  Book  of  Paris 

How  I  came  to  be  in  the  Bois  is  so  obvious 
that  it  does  not  matter.  Where  else,  unless 
to  the  Luxembourg  Gardens,  could  one  go 
on  a  spring  afternoon  when  the  shifting  sun- 
light was  as  capricious  as  the  breeze,  when 
every  horse-chestnut  along  the  Champs  Ely- 
sees  nodded  its  white  plumes,  as  if  saying, 
"  There  are  a  great  many  more  like  me  a 
little  farther  on,  —  yes,  in  that  direction"; 
and  when  even  the  cloud-shadows  that  flitted 
across  the  Place  de  l'Etoile  made  straight 
for  the  Porte  Dauphine. 

Except  the  step  one  takes  from  the  rue  de 
Vaugirard  into  the  Luxembourg  Gardens,  I 
know  of  none  so  enchanted  as  that  by  which 
one  leaves  Paris  at  the  Porte  Dauphine  and 
enters  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  One  walks  out 
of  the  city  into  a  fairy  tale.  It  is  a  French 
fairy  tale.  In  these  courtly  woods  there  is 
none  of  that  sombre  anxious  mystery  that  in- 
vests the  forest  in  which  Hansel  and  Gretel 
found  the  witch's  gingerbread  house,  nor  the 
atmosphere  of  charms  and  magic  enveloping 

[  124  ] 


In  the  Bois  de  Boulogne 


Au  Bois 

that  in  which  Amjed  and  Assad  wandered 
before  they  came  to  the  country  of  the  Fire- 
worshippers.  No,  the  Porte  Dauphine  is  the 
gateway  to  one  of  those  well-bred  seven- 
teenth-century fairy  tales,  in  which  every- 
thing is  in  good  taste,  where  the  princes 
make  love  to  the  princesses  in  the  politest, 
most  formal  fashion,  and  beneath  which  runs 
a  gentle  current  of  satire.  But  I,  for  one,  am 
too  happy  at  being  able  to  enter  any  fairy  tale 
at  all  to  quibble  about  the  kind. 

And  fairy  tale  it  was,  —  oh,  unmistakably ! 
I  knew  that,  the  moment  my  feet  had  crossed 
the  threshold.  I  had  known  it  before;  I  had 
known  it  always,  it  seemed  ;  yet  each  time  I 
returned  to  the  Bois  the  recognition  came  as 
something  new  and  surprising,  and  never  so 
fresh,  so  convincing,  as  on  this  May  after- 
noon. The  wide  splendidly-curving  route  de 
Suresnes  was  swept  with  great  silent  automo- 
biles ;  along  its  outer  edges  carriages  rolled 
by  more  slowly,  and  horsemen  trotted  styl- 
ishly.  Horsemen,  automobiles,  carriages  and 

[  125  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

the  ladies  in  them  shading  their  eyes  with 
pretty  little  parasols,  —  outside  the  iron  gates 
they  would  be  ordinary  enough ;  here  they 
were  all  under  a  spell.  And  on  the  gravel- 
walks  that  border  the  road,  in  the  intermi- 
nable line  of  chairs  (to  be  rented  at  two  sous 
for  an  ordinary,  four  for  an  arm,  —  chair)  sat 
miraculous  bourgeois,  and  enchanted  nurses 
watching  magic  babies.  Beyond,  to  right  and 
left,  were  the  woods,  dim  and  cool  with  slid- 
ing shadows,  brilliant  and  warm  with  green- 
gold  pools  of  sunshine.  A  hundred  little 
paths  led  in,  but  I  waited  until  the  route  de 
Suresnes  should  have  led  me  farther  on  be- 
fore leaving  it.  There  were  too  many  people 
in  the  paths  here.  Not  that  I  wished  to  avoid 
them  (that  would  indeed  be  to  miss  the  spirit 
of  the  Bois),  but  seen  thus  from  without  they 
were  so  much  in  keeping,  so  decorative,  that 
I  disliked  to  approach  and  destroy  the  charm. 
An  artist  once  pointed  out  to  me  how,  seen 
by  one  in  a  strong  light,  all  colors  in  half- 
light  fall  into  "value"  ;  and  I  have  treasured 

[  126] 


Au  Bois 

the  knowledge  ever  since.  There  was  a  wo- 
man seated  in  a  little  glade,  her  chair  against 
the  trunk  of  an  oak.  Gown  and  wide  hat  and 
small  half-blurred  profile,  —  she  was  perfect. 
Seen  thus  she  was  radiantly,  harmoniously 
beautiful.   I  refused  to  draw  nearer. 

So,  still  following  the  route  de  Suresnes, 
I  wandered  on  past  the  lake  with  its  poplar- 
clad  island.  I  might  have  turned  off  here, 
for  the  paths  and  the  glades  were  less  fre- 
quented; but  I  lingered  a  little  longer,  con- 
tent to  loaf,  —  to  fidnert  as  the  French  ex- 
pressively has  it,  — and  watch  the  incredibly 
heterogeneous  crowd  about  me.  English, 
Americans,  Turks,  guttural-sputtering  Ger- 
mans, with  "Remember  Sedan"  written  so 
unmistakably  in  their  aggressive  carriage  that 
I  wondered  they  were  not  immediately  mas- 
sacred, until  I  remembered  what  contempt 
the  Greeks  had  felt  for  their  conquerors,  and 
understood;  —  it  was  a  congress  of  all  na- 
tions, and  yet  the  whole  effect  was  superla- 
tively French.   Just  as  Rome  received  wave 

[  127  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

after  wave  of  Germanic  invasion,  changed 
her  victors  to  vanquished  with  the  spell  of 
herself,  and  left  them  Romans  or  (I  cannot 
help  fancying,  with  the  analogy  in  my  mind) 
would-be  Romans,  —  so  to-day  does  Paris 
rise  supreme  and  unchangeable  above  her 
invaders.  Let  the  Danes  and  the  Germans 
come;  turn  in  all  the  hordes  of  transatlantic 
barbarians  (most  of  us  have  already  been 
turned  in),  wise  men  or  fools,  philosophers, 
poets  or  libertines,  —  there  is  something, 
good  or  bad,  for  every  one.  Paris  is  inex- 
haustible, and  always  Paris.  Those  who  came 
with  an  idea,  lose  it,  but  are  given  a  hundred 
others  in  return ;  those  who  came  for  no 
reason  at  all,  find  one  for  not  going  back; 
and  those  who  came  to  scoff,  remain  to  pay, 
—  which  serves  them  right.  Having  achieved 
this  profound  reflection,  I  found  myself  stand- 
ing still  and  gazing  at  an  excellently  placed 
chair  that  happened  to  be  empty.  I  had  one 
second  of  hesitation,  then  I  dropped  into  it, 
feeling  in  my  pocket  for  the  copper  which 

[  128  ] 


Au  Bois 

that  hawk-eyed  old  woman,  already  ap- 
proaching with  her  sheaf  of  yellow  coupons, 
would  exact  in  the  name  of  the  French  Re- 
public. 

We  accuse  women  of  being  perverse;  yet 
their  perversity  is  as  nothing  compared  to 
ours.  They  are  only  perverse  as  to  facts  (be- 
ing told  to  do  one  thing  they  do  another) ; 
but  we  men  are  perverse  about  an  idea,  about 
a  fancy  of  our  own,  simply  for  the  pleasure 
of  it.  Consider  my  case.  The  woods  were 
more  attractive  than  the  route  de  Suresnes ; 
I  intended  to  go  into  the  woods;  I  wanted 
to  go  into  the  woods ;  yet  because  my  mind 
was  made  up  to  go,  I  found  a  guilty  pleasure 
in  sitting  down  here  and  putting  it  off. 

"  I  will  just  wait,"  I  said  apologetically, 
"until  something  happens;  then  I'll  go." 
What  if  nothing  did  happen?  Impossible.  You 
might  as  well  fear  that  nothing  will  happen 
in  a  play,  that  the  hero  will  have  no  adven- 
tures, that  the  heroine  will  marry  some  one 
else  and  go  to  live  somewhere  off  the  stage 

[  129  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

before  the  third  act.  The  Bois  is  just  a  play. 
You  might  as  well  fear  that  nothing  would 
happen  in  a  fairy  tale.  The  Bois  is  a  fairy 
tale,  —  a  seventeenth-century  French  fairy 
tale,  one  of  Madame  d'Aulnoy's  or  Monsieur 
de  Caylus's  —  remember,  when  you  speculate 
on  what  kind  of  thing  will  happen. 

The  spring  breeze  was  fresh  and  impe- 
rious. It  tumbled  the  yellow  curls  of  a  little 
four-year-old  American  boy  who  was  play- 
ing near  me,  and  kept  his  English  nurse  pat- 
ting at  her  unbeautiful  coiffure.  It  ruffled 
the  parasols  in  the  carriages,  and  annoyed 
especially  one  horsewoman  who  bent  her 
head  now  and  again  to  meet  it  as  she  can- 
tered by.  She  was  a  wonderful  little  creature, 
demi mondaine  from  the  tip  of  her  little  Amer- 
ican shoe  to  her  mass  of  bronze  hair  (like 
that  of  the  Botticelli  Venus)  and  the  tiny 
man's  hat  that  surmounted  it.  But  demi  mon- 
daine or  duchess,  she  sat  her  horse  well.  So 
much  cannot  be  said  of  her  cavalier,  a  gray- 
haired  man  of  about  fifty,  who  trotted  un- 

[  130  ] 


Au  Bois 

comfortably  a  hundred  feet  behind,  as  though 
he  had  been  a  groom  instead  of  the  financier 
who  could  have  bought  his  companion  three 
times  over,  that  he  probably  was.  As  for  her, 
she  rode  ahead  cruelly,  with  never  a  look 
behind.  But  only  a  little  way  past  my  chair 
she  raised  her  head  unwarily,  and  a  sharper 
gust  of  wind  than  any  yet  caught  hat  and 
bronze  hair,  swept  them  swiftly  off,  and 
dropped  them  limply  to  the  ground.  I  heard 
a  cry  from  beside  me,  and  withdrawing  my 
eyes  for  a  moment  from  the  stage,  I  saw  the 
little  boy  with  the  yellow  curls  standing,  his 
face  set,  his  eyes  wide  with  horror  at  the 
spectacle  of  so  much  suffering.  He  raised 
one  hand  to  his  own  locks;  —  they  were  still 
safe.  A  spectator,  stepping  out,  picked  up 
hat  and  wig,  and  handed  them  soberly  to 
the  cavalier,  who  accepted  them  with  im- 
perturbable gravity,  and  trotted  off  after  his 
inamorata.  (She  would  wait  for  him  now,  I 
thought.)  The  last  episode  was  too  much 
for  the  English  nurse,  who  broke  into  hearty 

[  i3i  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

British  laughter.  But  the  boy  turned  on  her 
in  a  flash,  his  eyes  ablaze  with  anger. 

"You  muthn't  laugh,  nurthe!"  he  cried, 
stamping  his  small  foot.  "It  ith n't  funny ! 
it  ithn't!" 

"I  should  like,"  I  reflected  as  I  rose,  "to 
know  that  child's  mother.  She  must  be  the 
only  woman  in  Paris  who  wears  her  own 
hair ;  and  living  in  Paris,  she  would  not  do 
that  unless  it  were  beautiful." 

All  manner  of  paths  lead  off  from  the 
route  de  Suresnes  at  this  point, —  paths  that 
run  parallel  with  the  road,  diagonal  paths, 
paths  that  begin  to  meander  before  they 
have  gone  six  rods.  I  took  one  that  plunged 
straight  in  and,  like  an  enchanted  flight  of 
steps,  led  me  at  once  from  the  brilliant  con- 
fusion of  the  highway  into  a  different  world, 
a  world  of  soft,  half-audible  sounds,  of  gold 
light  and  green  shadows.  Sometimes  through 
the  trees  to  right  or  left  I  would  get  a  swift 
glimpse  of  a  white  gown  or  catch  the  mur- 
mur of  words;  but  the  path  itself  was  quite 

[  J32  ] 


Au  Bois 

deserted.  Above,  in  the  sunlight,  the  top 
leaves  of  the  elms  and  maples  were  like 
stained  glass.  There  are  no  other  woods  so 
green  as  the  French  woods;  for  in  France 
not  alone  the  foliage  of  the  trees,  but  their 
trunks,  are  green,  —  a  dull  moss-color.  In 
one  place  the  path  was  all  in  darkness ;  far- 
ther on  it  was  a  brook  of  sunlight,  with  a 
long  shadow  lying  across  it  like  a  bridge. 
High  up  the  gusty  spring  wind  caught  at  the 
tops  of  the  trees,  and  set  them  rustling  almost 
articulately ;  but  here  below  there  was  only 
a  futile  baby  breeze,  full  of  a  hundred  child- 
ish impulses  that  came  to  nothing.  It  tried 
daintily  to  blow  the  shadow  away,  and  fail- 
ing, danced  off  to  other  absurdities. 

The  path  stopped  abruptly;  but  from  a 
little  green  circle  of  open  ground  in  which 
it  ended  two  others  led  away,  to  right  and 
left.  It  occurred  to  me  after  a  moment's 
hesitation  that,  if  I  walked  in  turn  a  little 
way  down  each,  I  should  surely  find  some- 
thing to  direct  my  choice.  The  right-hand 

[  i33  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

path  offered  a  butterfly  and  a  pair  of  lovers ; 
but  I  had  not  gone  far  along  that  to  the  left, 
when  I  caught,  faint  but  sweet,  the  scent  of 
acacias.  I  hurried  on  swiftly.  I  had  forgot- 
ten: it  was  mid-May,  and  the  wonderful 
trees  that  give  the  Allee  des  Acacias  its  name 
would  be  in  bloom  there  and  in  the  woods 
all  about  it. 

Where  the  delicate  odor  was  strongest 
and  the  blossoms  lay  thickest,  I  paused. 
Everywhere  the  white  petals  were  drifting 
slowly  down.  They  were  falling  all  around 
me ;  I  felt  one  brush  my  cheek  softly.  They 
had  covered  the  ground  with  a  white  foam. 
It  fairly  snowed  blossoms.  And  their  fra- 
grance hung  like  a  faint  mist  over  every- 
thing. As  I  lifted  my  head  to  inhale  more 
profoundly  their  perfume,  I  felt  the  breath 
suddenly  choke  in  my  throat,  and  my  eyes 
grow  hot  with  tears.  I  am  not  ashamed  to 
write  of  it ;  for  if  one  is  not  to  feel  his  eyes 
wet  in  the  sadness  and  wistfulness  of  the  per- 
ception of  perfect  beauty,  then  indeed  aspi- 

[  i34] 


At  the  Chateau  de  Madrid 


Au  Bois 

rations  are  dead,  a  Beethoven  symphony 
becomes  only  an  exercise  in  harmony,  and 
we  must  weep  other  and  bitter  tears  at  the 
world's  sterility. 

But  we  are  all  chained  by  the  fundamental 
materialism  of  our  lives.  Our  divinest  long- 
ings we  instinctively  attempt  to  express  in 
terms  of  facts.  It  is  this  that  makes  the  step 
from  the  sublime  to  the  ridiculous  so  short 
and  so  inevitable.  I  had  never  had  a  mo- 
ment of  truer  feeling,  of  higher  reaching 
out  toward  the  unfettered  soul  of  beauty ;  and 
yet  (it  is  right  that  I  should  tell  you)  two 
seconds  later  I  was  trying  to  express  the  dis- 
content, which  was  my  helpless  struggle  to 
escape  from  the  finite,  as  a  concrete  desire. 

"One  should  be  in  love,"  I  thought,  "to 
appreciate  this  !  " 

Do  me  the  credit  to  believe  that  the  next 
instant  I  had  turned  on  myself  with  scorn. 
And  well  I  might !  Put  aside  all  the  stu- 
pidity, all  the  prosaic  ignominy  of  which 
I  had  been  guilty  in  so  interpreting  what  I 

[  i35  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

had  felt;  take  the  reflection  as  just  a  gener- 
alization on  a  walk  beneath  flowering  trees 
that  had  a  pretty  perfume;  and  then  consider 
its  overwhelming  absurdity !  One  can  appre- 
ciate nothing  when  one  is  in  love.  One  is 
dazed,  self-centred,  drunk  —  with  the  charm 
but  the  dullness  of  intoxication.  No,  to  ap- 
preciate, one  must  not  be  in  love  —  one  must 
be  free,  clear-headed,  untrammeled  ;  but  — 
and  this  is  the  secret — one  must  have  been 
in  love,  and  one  must  feel  the  possibility  of 
falling  in  love  again. 

"  You,"  I  said  to  myself  contemptuously, 
"are  unworthy  of  genuine  feeling.  Your 
mind  is  as  earthy  as  Monsieur  Perrichon's, 
and  you  had  better  be  off  with  it  to  some 
place  that  is  mundane  enough  to  be  within 
its  comprehension,  —  the  Chateau  de  Ma- 
drid, for  example";  and  turned  my  steps 
sheepishly  thither. 

"  But,"  you  will  say,  if  you  have  been  in 
the  Bois  only  a  few  times,  "  the  Chateau  de 
Madrid  is  not  in  the  Bois  at  all ;  it  is  across 

[  136] 


Au  Bois 

the  Boulevard  Richard  Wallace  from  it  at 
the  Porte  de  Madrid."  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  you  have  come  to  know  the  splendid 
Parisian  park  more  intimately,  you  will  for 
once,  I  think,  nod  approval.  For  as  Brook- 
line  is  to  Boston,  —  that  is  to  say,  more 
essentially  Bostonian  than  Boston  itself,  — 
so  stands  the  Chateau  de  Madrid  in  relation 
to  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  It  is  like  one  of 
those  models  of  an  ancient  city  before  which 
one  lingers,  fascinated,  at  museums.  In  the 
city  itself  there  would  have  been  at  any  pe- 
riod uncharacteristic  monuments,  meaning- 
less sticks  and  stones  ;  in  the  model  there  is 
nothing  that  is  not  significant.  So  here,  all 
the  gracefulness  of  the  Bois,  all  its  unreality, 
all  its  prettiness,  all  its  chic  (if  you  will  per- 
mit the  word),  are  gathered  up  and  ex- 
pressed in  this  dainty  little  court  which  is 
the  Chateau  de  Madrid,  as  a  distant  land- 
scape is  gathered  into  the  finding-glass  of  a 
camera.  What  the  Chateau  de  Madrid  may 
once  have  been,  or  what  may  formerly  have 

[  i37  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

stood  in  the  exquisite  place  it  occupies,  I  do 
not  know.  To-day  it  is  a  restaurant,  and  its 
full  name  is  Le  Restaurant  du  Chateau  de 
Madrid;  so  I  fancy  it  is  called  for  some 
vanished  palace.  Moreover  it  is  not  a  res- 
taurant of  the  Bois  but  the  restaurant. 
There  are  numerous  others,  all  crowded  at 
the  proper  hours  in  spring  and  summer ; 
nevertheless,  the  Chateau  de  Madrid  is  the 
restaurant.  Society  is  fickle.  By  the  time 
you  read  this,  some  other  may  have  its  ap- 
proval, and  the  Chateau  de  Madrid,  though 
seemingly  as  crowded  as  ever,  be  deserted, 
to  one  who  can  discriminate.  Only  a  few 
years  ago  Armenonville  was  supreme,  and 
now  who  goes  to  Armenonville?  and  how 
odd  it  seems  to  be  told,  in  a  novel  dealing 
with  the  polite  world,  of  engagements  made 
for  breakfast  there !  But  fashion  is  a  wheel 
that  rotates  (I  think  some  one  else  has  said 
this  before  me),  passing  repeatedly  the  same 
point  ;  so  it  may  be  that  if,  through  some 
improbable  chance,  there  is  any  one  to  read 

[  133  ] 


Au  Bois 

these  words  ten  years  from  now,  he  will 
smile  and  acknowledge  that  there  is  no  res- 
taurant but  the  Chateau  de  Madrid,  and  que 
les  autre s  n  existent  pas. 

A  short  curving  drive,  bordered  with 
glowing  beds  of  flowers,  leads  to  the  arch- 
way through  which  one  reaches  the  gay  lit- 
tle court.  There  are  two  acceptable  manners 
of  entering  the  Chateau  de  Madrid,  on  foot, 
or  in  your  own  carriage.  There  is  a  third 
way,  —  by  an  ordinary  taxi-cab.  But,  though 
the  face  of  the  servant  who  hastens  up  is  as 
impassive  as  ever,  and  his  deference  in  assist- 
ing your  lady  —  if  lady  you  have  —  to 
alight,  as  perfect,  there  is  that  in  his  manner 
which,  added  to  your  own  sense  of  wrong- 
doing, makes  then  for  your  discomfort.  I 
entered  on  foot. 

There  is  for  most  people  a  kind  of  exhil- 
aration in  an  environment  of  elegance.  I  feel 
it  sometimes  in  a  drawing-room,  where  per- 
haps the  wit  is  not  keen,  and  the  conversa- 
tion much  less  brilliant  than  in  many  a  dingy 

[  i39  ] 


'The  Book  of  Paris 

cafe.  I  felt  it  now,  as  the  suave  maitre  d' hotel 
bowed  me  to  an  unoccupied  table  whence  I 
had  an  easy  view  of  the  whole  graceful  little 
scene.  The  sensation  is  a  puzzling  one.  It 
is  hardly  the  titillation  of  tickled  vanity,  the 
effervescence  of  the  consciousness  that  one 
is  part  of  a  superior  world;  for  it  is  depend- 
ent solely  on  appearances,  and  remains  no 
duller  or  less  grateful,  when  of  one's  own 
certain  knowledge  one  can  correct  the  ap- 
pearances. The  questions,  "  Who  were  your 
fathers  ? '  "  Had  you  grandfathers  ? "  never 
lurk  uncomfortably  behind  it.  Indeed  it  is,  I 
fancy,  more  readily  obtained  from  a  restau- 
rant full  of  cocottes  than  from  a  room  full 
of  duchesses;  since  a  very  old  and  dowdy 
woman  may  be  a  duchess,  while  only  a 
young  and  well-groomed  one  can  be  a  co- 
cotte.  The  cocotte  to-day,  in  her  brief  but- 
terfly hour  of  life,  sets  the  fashion,  and  is 
supreme  in  elegance.  The  comtesse  or  the 
marquise,  immured  in  her  grim  faubourg, 
has  yet,  it  is  true,  something  else  that  she 

[  140  ] 


Au  Bois 

will  not  bring  to  the  Chateau  de  Madrid  to 
profane — the  tradition  of  a  nobler  vanished 
elegance  (though  indeed  those  long-dead 
ladies,  her  relatives,  whose  portraits  as  shep- 
herdesses smile  down  upon  her  shabby  gen- 
tility, were  only  superlative  cocottes  them- 
selves, willing,  the  most  virtuous  of  them,  to 
sell  themselves  for  the  king's  favor)  ;  but  as 
for  the  respectable  bourgeoises  let  her  sniff 
as  morally  as  she  please,  however  high  her 
bourgeoisie,  there  will  be  a  touch  of  envy 
beneath  the  disdain  with  which  she  regards 
the  elegance  of  the  cocotte. 

Not  half  the  tables  in  the  little  open-air 
enclosure  were  taken,  for  it  was  not  quite  the 
tea-hour  yet.  But  the  people  were  arriving 
fast.  On  the  other  side  of  the  drive  that  leads 
into  and  through  the  court  an  orchestra  was 
playing  ;  but  though  one  saw  all  the  panto- 
mime of  music,  only  a  sudden  crescendo  in  the 
strings,  or  an  occasional  shrill  note  from  the 
flute,  was  audible.  The  rest  was  drowned  in 
the  rattling  of  horses'  hoofs,  the  crunching 

[  Mi  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

of  the  gravel  beneath  carriage-wheels,  and 
the  warning  blasts  of  entering  automobiles. 
It  was  just  as  well:  I  had  heard  that  orches- 
tra on  quieter  afternoons.  There  were  flow- 
ers all  about,  in  masses,  in  boxes,  in  pots. 
The  mirrors  that  lined  the  entrance-wall, 
and  others  tucked  in  every  conceivable  cor- 
ner, glowed  with  the  scarlet  reflection  of 
geraniums.  The  breeze  was  subsiding  (it 
would  play  no  more  tricks  that  day) ;  but 
when  with  its  gentle  subdued  puffs  it  touched 
my  face,  I  was  conscious  of  a  heady  intoxi- 
cating odor,  the  combined  fragrance  of  roses, 
iris,  mignonette,  and  the  different  subtle  per- 
fumes that  the  women  wore. 

The  tables  were  filling  swiftly.  From  car- 
riage after  carriage  the  women  descended, 
light-gowned,  dainty,  young,  —  nearly  all 
of  them, —  (there  were  men  too,  but  no  one 
looked  at  them) ;  until  in  a  surprisingly  short 
time,  the  court  was  full,  and  the  maltre  d' ho- 
tel spread  out  his  expressive  deprecating 
hands,  with  a  gesture  of  sorrowful  helpless- 

[  142  ] 


An  Old  Habitue 


Jr-Sk 


aL\* 


■  • 

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M.£*  I 


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■A- 

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Ii- 


.  -  ■  ■ .     -■■'  - 


■     ',■       \     ■ 


Au  Bois 

ness,  before  the  straggling  late-comers.  A 
pleasant  hum  of  voices,  that  was  like  the  dif- 
fused radiance  of  the  flowers  or  the  pervasive 
perfume,  filled  the  enclosure.  Daintiness, 
elegance,  the  perfection  of  prettiness,  —  one 
got  the  impression  of  these  things  harmoni- 
ously through  three  senses  at  once.  It  may 
not  have  been  an  impression  of  much  im- 
portance in  life ;  but  it  was  a  most  agreeable 
one.  Moreover,  about  no  other  place  that  I 
have  seen  was  there  ever  a  more  splendid 
atmosphere  of  youth.  It  set  eyes  sparkling 
and  tongues  babbling.  These  women  —  most 
of  them  —  were  des  cigales,  and  this  was 
their  summer.  Heart  and  soul  they  threw 
themselves  unreservedly  into  the  present. 
Who  stopped  to  think  of  the  poor  cigales  of 
yesterday?  Who  would  croak  of  the  winter 
to  come  ?  Pah  !  Sermons  at  a  masked  ball  ? 
An  exquisite  fair-haired  girl,  in  a  pale  blue 
gown  and  a  wide,  slanting,  blue-flowered  hat, 
caught  me  gazing  at  her,  and  threw  me  a 
swift  brilliant  smile.     It  was  not  that  she 

[  143  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

fancied  me,  I  knew,  but  she  was  pleased  at 
the  unguarded  admiration  in  my  look,  and 
then  —  she  and  I  were  young,  while  the  man 
she  was  with  was  forty  at  least.  Without 
him,  it  is  true,  or  some  other  like  him,  she 
would  not  have  been  here  nor  wearing  the 
pale  blue  gown  ;  and  the  great  drooping 
hat  would  have  been  reposing  in  some  win- 
dow on  the  rue  de  la  Paix.  Well,  what 
then  ?  She  paid  him,  did  she  not  ?  Must 
she  like  him  into  the  bargain  ?  Her  smiles 
were  her  own. 

I  fell  to  wondering,  as  I  stared  about  me, 
which  of  the  women  were  the  cocottes  and 
which  the  honnetes  fe?nmes.  Broadly  speak- 
ing, the  former  were  probably,  as  I  have  said, 
to  be  distinguished  by  their  greater  elegance ; 
but  the  rule  was  a  bit  too  sweeping.  In  the 
end  I  concluded  that  the  cocottes  were  those 
who  were  eating  ices,  and  the  honnetes  femmes 
those  who  were  drinking  tea ;  for  the  first 
do  as  they  please,  but  the  second  as  it  is  proper 
to  do ;  and  though  the  English  have  forced 

[  144  ] 


Au  Bois 

the   custom  upon  them,  the   French  have 
never  honestly  learned  to  reverence  tea. 

Sitting  alone  at  a  table  near  mine,  where 
I  could  watch  her  without  turning  my  head, 
was  a  little  demi-mondaine .  She  was  very  pretty. 
Her  gown  and  hat  were  charming,  her  fea- 
tures behind  her  light  veil  were  small  and 
fine,  and  on  her  cheeks  there  was  just  the  soft- 
est touch  of  rose,  that  I  should  have  thought 
natural  if  it  were  not  that  such  creamy  com- 
plexions are  usually  colorless.  She  could  not 
have  been  more  than  two  or  three  and  twenty. 
Yet  she  made  a  sadly  pathetic  little  figure. 
It  was  not  that  she  was  alone.  The  maitre 
d'hotel  had  shown  her  especial  courtesy,  and 
a  man  who  had  been  welcomed  with  a  word 
of  respectful  recognition  by  more  than  one 
waiter  had  bowed  and  stopped  for  a  moment 
to  speak  pleasantly  with  her.  Indeed,  her 
being  here  unaccompanied  was  rather  a  sign 
that  her  position  was  established.  One  goes 
to  the  Chateau  de  Madrid  when  one's  fortune 
is  made,  —  not  to  seek  it.    I  should  as  soon 

[  145  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

have  thought  of  accosting  the  girl  with  the 
middle-aged  man  as  her.  Neither  did  I  fancy 
sentimentally  that  she  was  reflecting  on  ci- 
gales  and  winters.  There  are  many  ways  of 
classifying  people ;  but  one  of  the  most  use- 
ful, and  perhaps  the  only  universally  accurate 
manner,  is  of  dividing  people  into  those  who 
are  and  those  who  make  believe.  The  pretty 
demi-mondaine  was  of  the  second  category, 
and  her  pathos  lay  in  the  fact  that  she  felt 
it.  With  her  irreproachable  gown,  her  well- 
chosen  hat,  and  her  tiny  pompous  spaniel 
that  lay  curled  in  a  chair  beside  hers,  and  ate 
wafers  from  her  hand,  she  was  as  complete 
as  any  of  the  others  and  prettier  than  most ; 
yet  her  slender  fingers  played  nervously  with 
the  ivory  handle  of  her  small  flurry  parasol, 
and  her  eyes  were  timid.  If  she  could  have 
understood  intellectually  that  the  difference 
between  herself  and  the  rest  was  not  in  ex- 
ternals but  just  in  a  shabby  trick  that  Nature 
had  played  her,  she  might  have  learned  not 
to  show  her  consciousness  of  being  a  make- 

[  146] 


Au  Bois 

believe.  But  that  consciousness  came  to 
her,  I  was  sure,  merely  as  a  vague  uneasi- 
ness. Her  life  was  pure  feeling.  Reason  was 
at  least  as  foreign  to  her  as  to  the  little 
spaniel.  And  after  all  it  may  be  she  would 
not  have  made  a  success  had  she  been  differ- 
ent. Her  charm,  I  reflected,  lay  precisely 
in  her  wistfulness.  Very  likely  her  life  was 
happier  than  that  of  many  who  were  not 
make-believes.  Men  are  always  gentle  with 
such  women. 

When  the  tea-hour  was  over  and  it  was 
no  longer  fashionable  to  remain,  I  left  the 
restaurant,  and  again  crossing  the  Boulevard 
Richard  Wallace,  reentered  the  Bois.  The 
paths  were  shadowy  and  very  still  now,  and 
I  wandered  peacefully,  without  thought  of 
direction,  from  one  to  another,  until  as  even- 
ing began  to  fall  I  happened  on  the  Restau- 
rant du  Pre  Catalan.  I  dined  there  agreeably 
out  of  doors,  while  a  tolerable  orchestra  just 
within  played  Strauss  waltzes  and  other  deco- 
rative music.    When  I  had  finished,  the  sun 

[  147  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

was  long  set,  and  the  moon,  not  yet  quite  at 
the  full,  was  high. 

I  set  off  again,  taking  a  cab  this  time,  in 
deference  to  the  tradition  that  after  dark  the 
Bois  is  unsafe  for  pedestrians.  A  moment, 
and  Pre  Catalan  with  its  lights  and  its  laugh- 
ter had  vanished  like  one  of  those  enchanted 
palaces — scarcely  more  real  indeed —  in  the 
"  Arabian  Nights."  The  tones  of  the  orches- 
tra were  audible  for  a  little  while,  then  they 
too  died  away,  and  there  was  nothing  to  break 
the  moonlit  silence  of  the  allee  we  followed 
but  the  low  murmur  of  leaves  overhead,  the 
rhythmic  thudding  of  the  horses'  hoofs,  and 
the  soft  whispering  sound  that  the  rubber  tires 
of  the  open  carriage  made  on  the  ground.  I 
looked  for  a  second  at  the  squat  inscrutable 
figure  on  the  box  before  me,  and  wondered 
what  thoughts  were  in  his  mind.  It  has  often 
seemed  strange  to  me  that  cochers,  whose  op- 
portunities for  observation  and  for  solitude  are 
immense  and  exactly  equal,  whose  very  ?ne- 
tier  it  is  to  be  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  chang- 

[  148  ] 


Au  Bois 

ing  scene,  should  become  wits  rather  than 
philosophers.  Perhaps,  I  thought  vaguely, 
they  were  witty  because  when  on  a  course  they 
crossed  swiftly  the  path  of  some  copain,  or 
when  their  cab  for  an  instant  locked  wheels 
with  the  wagon  of  an  irate  teamster,  the  mo- 
ment was  too  brief  for  any  but  terse  epigram- 
matic phrases  to  tell.  True,  there  was  nothing 
to  indicate  that  they  were  not  philosophers 
also.  But  was  that  probable  ?  Men  who  were 
both  wits  and  philosophers  could  rule  Paris. 
All  vocations  were  open  to  them ;  they  could 
succeed  in  anything.  Well,  perhaps  they 
knew  it,  and  preferred  to  remain  cochers.  If 
they  were  philosophers  they  were  in  pursuit 
of  knowledge ;  what  other  profession  would 
offer  so  much  ?  And  as  to  ruling  Paris,  it  was 
matter  for  deliberation  whether  they  did  not 
rule  it  already. 

At  night,  in  such  a  setting  of  silence  and 
unreality,  one's  fancy  frisks  along  unimpeded 
like  one's  thought  in  a  dream,  where  there 
are  none  of  the  inhibitions  of  waking  life. 

[  i49  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

As  in  the  dream,  one's  deductions  are  en- 
tirely logical  and  completely  absurd  because 
no  suggestion  of  common  sense  ever  enters 
to  modify  the  initial  premise.  Asleep,  we 
should  follow  the  idea  to  such  a  point  of 
impossibility  that  when  we  waken,  being 
unable  to  remember  the  steps  by  which  we 
progressed,  we  should  dismiss  the  result  as 
sheer  vagrant  inanity  (and  this  sometimes 
happens),  if  it  were  not  that  generally,  be- 
fore one  train  of  thought  goes  very  far,  some- 
thing happens —  a  breath  of  air  touches  our 
cheeks  or  a  sound  our  ears  —  to  change  the 
current  of  the  dream  and  establish  a  new 
point  of  departure.  In  waking  life  the  thought 
can  never  be  carried  so  far,  since  the  possi- 
bilities for  this  something  to  arise  are  many 
times  more  numerous. 

So  now  when  we  had  rounded  a  curve 
and  I  looked  up  to  see  Bagatelle  a  stone's 
throw  away,  cochers  ceased  to  exist  for  me. 
It  was  no  wonder.  The  little  chateau  shone 
as  white  and  still  as  the  moon  herself,  while 

[  150] 


Cochers 


Au  Bois 

on  the  terrace  before  it  the  shrubbery  was  a 
deep  blue-black.  All  about  rose  the  pop- 
lars, beautifully  grouped  by  threes  and  fours 
that  melted  together  indistinguishably,  each 
group  a  splendid  mass  of  pale  light  and  lu- 
minous darkness,  except  where,  high  up, 
the  feathery  curving  top  of  one  or  another 
emerged  and  trembled  delicately,  a  blurred 
shadow  against  the  sky.  They  would  be  won- 
derful by  day ;  but  now,  at  night,  they  seemed 
the  shivering  wings  of  Beauty  herself,  poised 
for  a  little  fugitively  upon  the  earth.  If  I 
could  only  have  stayed  !  If  I  could  have 
held  it!  If  I  could  have  somehow  become 
part  of  it!  Yet  I  did  not  dare  even  to  pause; 
for  I  knew  that,  after  a  moment,  though  a 
tender  reverence  for  the  scene  would  remain, 
the  inspired  perception,  the  acute  sense  of 
its  loveliness,  would  be  gone  ;  and  the  regret 
for  what  I  had  lost  would  be  too  poignant. 
What  cry  is  bitterer  than  Coleridge's,  "  I 
see,  not  feel,  how  beautiful  they  are  !  ' 
Whether  it  is  that  before  the  almost  tangi- 

[  151  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

ble  presence  of  beauty  we  ache  to  merge 
ourselves,  to  lose  our  personality,  —  and  that 
this  would  mean  death,  — 

"  Now  more  than  ever  seems  it  rich  to  die, 
To  cease  upon  the  midnight  with  no  pain, 
While  thou  art  pouring  forth  thy  soul  abroad 
In  such  an  ecstasy,"  — 

while,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  the  overwhelm- 
ing instinct  of  life  calls  on  us  to  maintain  and 
strengthen  our  individuality,  or  whether  the 
reason  lies  elsewhere,  the  sad  truth  is  that 
intense  emotion  such  as  we  then  feel  can 
come  but  by  accident  and  endure  but  an  in- 
stant. The  next,  the  wax  melts  in  the  wings 
that  would  have  carried  us  out  of  the  world, 
and  we  fall,  like  Icarus,  heavily  upon  our- 
selves. 

"  Forlorn,  the  very  word  is  like  a  bell 
To  toll  me  back  from  thee  to  my  sole  self!" 

No  one  has  put  it  better  than  Keats. 

The  gleaming  chateau,  the  moonlit  ter- 
race, and  the  poplars  were  gone  now.  "A 
la  Porte  Maillot,'  I  said  to  the  cocker, 
wearily. 

[  152] 


Au  Bois 

"Ah,"  I  thought,  raising  my  head,  "as 
the  black  night  with  stars,  so  the  immense 
banality  of  our  lives  is  set  with  moments  of 
feeling. " 


Fiacres 


Love  in  Paris 


VI 

Love  in  Paris 

'EOPLE  are  wrong  to  leave  Paris 
in  summer.  The  impression  that 
in  that  season  the  city  becomes 
unbearably  hot  was,  I  fancy, 
spread  by  the  English;  for  unless  there  is  a 
slight  chill  about  the  air  and  draughts  to  sit 
in,  the  average  Englishman  begins  to  mop 
his  forehead  and  complain  of  the  heat.  But 
to  the  man  born  in  our  country  of  rigorous 
extremes,  the  summer  climate  of  Paris  seems 
gentle  and  equable.  (I  have,  moreover,  rarely 
found  an  American  who  succeeded  in  being 
warm  enough  anywhere  in  Europe  at  no 
matter  what  time  of  year.)  And  Paris  in 
August  is  worth  knowing.  If  it  has  lost  the 
sense  of  freshness  and  buoyancy  it  possessed 
in  early  spring  and  has  not  yet  gained  the 

[  i57  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

delicate  melancholy  of  its  autumn  nor  its 
strange,  poignant  winter  charm,  there  is, 
nevertheless,  a  lavish  sleepy  beauty  about  it, 
more  attractive  in  this  period,  when  one's 
mind  is  in  abeyance  and  one  lives  only 
through  his  senses,  than  would  be  those  sub- 
tler moods.  The  city  belongs  to  one,  too,  in 
a  way  it  does  not  at  any  other  season.  The 
wide  boulevards  are  all  but  deserted ;  the 
Place  Vendome  is  bare  and  silent ;  only  a 
loitering  omnibus  and  perhaps  a  tenantless 
cab  or  two  interrupt  the  perspective  of  the 
rue  Royale  and  the  obelisk  in  the  Place  de 
la  Concorde  from  the  steps  of  the  Made- 
leine ;  one  may  even  cross  the  Champs  Ely- 
sees  without  risking  his  life;  all  the  Paris 
world  is  at  Trouville,  Deauville,  or  some- 
where else.  From  time  to  time  personally- 
conducted  parties  of  tourists  surge  into  the 
town  and  pause  for  a  day  or  two  in  their 
relentless  way  across  Europe,  —  Germans 
with  guide-books,  spectacles  and  green  hats 
flaunting  each  a  solitary  feather,  English  (of 

[  i58] 


Love  in  Paris 

that  class  which  likes  the  heat  no  more  than 
another,  but  which  has  to  travel  now  or  not 
at  all)  with  guide-books  and  pipes,  and 
Americans  with  guide-books.1  But  they  serve 
only  to  heighten  one's  sense  of  the  city's 
emptiness  — like  rats  in  a  vacant  house.  All 
this  is  in  the  day-time.  At  night  everything 
is  different;  for  then  the  workers  who  have 
been  hidden  in  shops,  bureaux,  government- 
offices,  pour  forth  and  overflow  the  streets 
in  which  an  hour  before  one  could  hear  the 
echo  of  his  own  footsteps,  and  fill  with  the 
murmur  of  their  voices  the  gardens  that 
have  been  silent  since  morning. 

Such  is  Paris  in  midsummer,  and  as  such 
too  I  have  grown  to  love  it.  If  I  go  to  the 
shore  at  all,  it  is  in  September,  when  I  can 
possess  unmolested  the  whole  sea  for  half 
the  price  I  must  have  paid  to  rent  in  dis- 
comfort a  small  fragment  of  it  two  months 

1  Further  characterization  of  my  summer-flitting  countrymen 
is  impossible.  Their  heterogeneity  is  immense  and  gorgeous.  I 
thank  heaven  for  the  guide-books! 

[    159] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

earlier.  And  although  no  events  break  its 
agreeable  monotony,  a  summer  in  Paris  al- 
ways contains  unforgettable  days  (when  one 
did  nothing  very  particular)  that  one  looks 
back  to  affectionately,  which,  I  suppose,  is 
as  good  a  test  as  another  of  a  season  hap- 
pily spent. 

The  recollection  of  one  of  these  from  last 
August  is  still  vivid  for  me.  It  began  —  that 
is  to  say,  I  begin  to  remember  it — at  about 
four  in  the  afternoon,  when  I  stood  smok- 
ing a  cigarette  on  the  little  balcony  outside 
my  sitting-room,  my  elbows  resting  on  the 
iron  railing, — for  all  the  world,  it  occurred 
to  me  with  pleasant  self-deceit,  like  Chad 
in  "The  Ambassadors."  Sunlight  permeated 
everything.  The  river  was  a  dazzling  blue; 
its  bridges  a  warm  golden  brown.  The  low 
hum  of  mature  summer  filled  the  air.  It  was 
a  drowsy  indolent  day,  and  yet  —  beneath  its 
seeming  peacefulness  there  was  to  be  felt  an 
immense  and  restless  vitality,  like  that  of 
which  one  becomes  sometimes  aware  in  the 

[  160] 


La  Lettre  a" Amour 


Love  in  Paris 

lazy  feline  glance  from  between  the  half- 
closed  eyelids  of  a  languorous  woman.  Its 
effect  on  me  was  strangely  to  make  me  feel 
at  once  happy  and  discontented,  and  (para- 
doxical as  it  may  sound)  as  though,  if  I  were 
more  contented,  I  should  be  less  happy.  I 
wanted  something  and  did  not  know  what. 
On  reflection  it  seemed  that  it  might  be 
gingerbread  with  raisins  in.  When  one  ex- 
periences this  desperate  baffling  desire  for 
something  he  cannot  name  (and  everyone 
knows  the  feeling),  it  is  always  a  dainty  he 
loved  as  a  child  that  seems  most  nearly  to 
approximate  the  object  of  his  longing;  for 
the  simple  luxuries  of  childhood  were  cou- 
pled with  sensations  more  vivid  and  en- 
chanted than  any  the  most  complex  plea- 
sures can  give  us  now.  As  for  the  object  of 
my  own  wish,  it  might  as  well  have  been  a 
roc's  Qgg;  pain  cTepice  is  very  unlike  ginger- 
bread. Beyond  the  quay  a  little  bateau 
mouche  swept  by  silently  on  its  way  down 
stream  to  Suresnes ;  then  another  and  another, 

[  161  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

and  I  noted  with  surprise  that  their  decks 
were  black  with  passengers.  It  must  be  Sat- 
urday ;  on  the  whole  I  believed  it  was.  And 
since  a  large  part  of  the  population  of  Paris 
seemed  to  be  going  down  the  river,  why 
should  not  I  go  too? 

There  are  those  whom  the  proximity  of 
a  crowd  renders  unhappy,  who  experience 
distaste  for  its  vulgarity  and  pain  at  its  ugli- 
ness. Unless  the  revulsion  is  a  pose,  they  are 
not  to  be  despised  for  it  (no  sincere  feel- 
ing is  despicable),  but  they  are  to  be  pitied. 
Through  this  innate  or  cultivated  atrophy 
of  one  side  of  their  nature  they  are  cut  off 
from  that  unity  of  impression  by  which  an 
understanding  of  a  city  is  expressed.  They 
may  completely  appreciate  a  Norman  land- 
scape; Paris  they  will  never  know.  For  one 
knows  a  city  in  a  profound  and  significant 
sense,  not  when  one  has  become  familiar 
with  its  museums,  parks,  and  ancient  streets, 
—  all  this  serves  as  little  as  an  acquaintance 
with  anatomy  would  serve  toward  a  philo- 

[  162  ] 


Love  in  Paris 

sophic  understanding  of  man's  nature;  —  but 
when  one  has  come  to  feel  a  great,  if  vague, 
good-will,  an  honest  friendly  sympathy,  and 
above  all,  a  pity  in  which  there  is  no  conde- 
scension for  the  commonplace  unromantic 
human  beings  who  jostle  past  him  on  the 
city's  sidewalks.  It  is  because  I  have  never 
reached  this  state  of  mind  in  London  that 
the  English  metropolis  remains  for  me  an 
admitted  enigma.  The  men  I  have  known 
who  confessed  to  this  distaste  for  the  popu- 
lace were  avowedly  seekers  after  beauty,  and 
it  was,  they  averred,  the  bitter  ugliness  they 
saw  in  the  crowd  that  offended  them.  Yet, 
conceding  as  reasonable  such  singleness  of 
quest,  and  acknowledging  the  emotional  sen- 
sitiveness to  which  they  all  pretend,  I  find 
them  singularly  warped  and  narrow  even  in 
their  own  specialized  department  of  feeling. 
There  are  so  many  kinds  of  beauty;  it  exists 
everywhere,  gleaming  out  at  one  often  from 
ugliness  itself.  Surely  the  aesthete's  life  would 
be  richer  if  he  would  only  see  the  beauty, 

f  163  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

fragmentary  as  it  is,  in  the  common  everyday 
things. 

It  was  the  variegated  aspect  of  the  deck 
of  the  little  boat  to  which  I  stepped  from 
the  Passy  landing  that  started  such  random 
thoughts.  With  my  back  against  the  rail  I 
stood  and  watched  the  spectacle,  —  people 
wedged  along  the  inadequate  benches,  people 
in  the  aisles  between,  chatting,  smoking, 
crowding  against  one  another  and  me  ;  mak- 
ing broad  jokes  and  bursting  into  roars  of 
laughter  over  them  ;  breaking  into  swift 
quarrels  to  which  some  flash  of  wit  in  the  re- 
marks bandied  hotly  back  and  forth  brought 
swifter  reconciliation ;  espousing  the  disputes 
of  others ;  soldiers,  clerks,  shop-keepers, 
women  young  and  gay,  women  old  and  so 
superlatively  ugly  that  they  could  be  nothing 
but  ouvreuses  from  some  theatre,  and  set  one  in- 
stinctively groping  for  a  fifty-centime  piece ; 
babies  with  wide  curious  eyes  and  sticky 
mouths;  servant  maids, — just  people,  in 
short,  and  at  every  new  landing  more  people, 

[  164  ] 


Love  in  Paris 

their  expression  changing  from  tense  appre- 
hension, as  the  boat  slowly  neared  the  wharf, 
to  relief  and  placid  self-congratulation,  when 
it  had  touched  and  they  had  struggled  aboard. 
There  was  not  a  handsome  face  to  be  seen, 
nor  a  dainty  gown,  nor  a  graceful  gesture, 
—  yet  there  was  a  homely  beauty  about  it  all. 
What  an  aesthete  would  have  felt  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  divine,  —  I  am  afraid  of  doing  injus- 
tice to  his  point  of  view;  but  no  one  else 
could  have  considered  this  careless,  happy, 
vulgar,  holiday  multitude  without  experienc- 
ing pleasure  at  its  frank  enjoyment  and  a 
sympathetic  curiosity  as  to  the  lives  of  the 
individuals  who  composed  it. 

Some  one  (perhaps  it  was  Thackeray) 
wrote  wistfully  of  what  a  spectacle  of  hu- 
manity we  should  have  if  the  roofs  of  the 
houses  in  a  city  were  removed  and  we  could 
hover  above  looking  down  into  each.  There 
is  a  charm  about  the  idea  like  that  investing 
the  magical  attributes  of  the  prince  in  a  fairy 
tale ;  but  after  all  we  should  learn  from  such 

[  165  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

a  survey  little  more  than  we  know  already. 
If  instead  we  could  see  into  the  minds,  now 
so  infinitely  removed,  of  the  men  and  women 
swarming  all  about  us,  —  could  see  the  hopes 
and  the  doubts,  the  base  desires,  the  high 
aspirations,  the  nobility  and  the  ignominy 
struggling  confusedly  in  each,  —  then  what 
a  spectacle  indeed  we  should  get !  Our  own 
minds,  I  think,  would  be  sweetened  and 
purified  by  such  insight,  full  of  tolerance, 
and  with  no  room  left  in  the  sadness  of  so 
immense  a  knowledge  for  any  emotion  ex- 
cept the  profound  passion  of  pity  which 
touches  us  now  only  rarely  and  faintly;  we 
should  not  be  men  but  demi-gods.  If  you 
doubt  so  much,  you  have  only  to  look  into 
the  face  of  some  old  Catholic  priest  of  the 
best  type.  And  yet  he,  sitting  day  after  day 
in  the  confessional,  has  not  learned  a  tenth 
of  the  truth,  even  as  to  those  penitents  who 
stammer  their  sins  brokenly  into  his  ear. 

These  reflections  pertained  to  the  initial 
stage  of  the  trip.   Afterwards,  before  we  had 

[  166] 


Love  in  Paris 

even  come  in  sight  of  the  smug  ubiquitous 
statue  of  Liberty,  I  fell  into  the  grasp  of  a 
different  more  precise  feeling,  —  a  kind  of 
apologetic  sense  of  being  out  of  place,  an 
intruder ;  for  when  the  inevitable  first  five 
minutes  of  inability  to  see  a  crowd  of  which 
one  is  a  part,  except  as  a  confused  whole,  only 
vaguely  composed  of  parts,  were  over,  and  I 
had  begun  to  consider  the  elements  of  the 
scene  separately,  I  found  that  this  multitude 
did  not  analyze  into  individuals  but  into 
pairs.  The  idea  seemed,  to  begin  with,  so 
absurdly  literary  that  I  fancied  I  had  fallen 
on  exceptions  and  was  generalizing  from  in- 
sufficient material,  —  a  not  uncommon  fault, 
—  and  so  abandoned  my  place  at  the  rail  for 
a  wider  survey ;  but  before  I  had  made  my 
way  curiously  half  round  the  deck,  I  was 
fairly  swamped  with  proofs.  There  never 
was  such  another  truth  as  that !  A  philoso- 
pher would  have  turned  green  at  its  abso- 
luteness and  a  grammarian  would  have  died 
of  envy.   These  people,  whether  occupying 

[  167  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

the  benches,  resting  against  the  rail,  or  ebb- 
ing to  and  fro  in  the  space  between,  were 
without  exception  not  ones  but  twos.  Every 
soldier  had  his  bonne  amie,  every  clerk  his 
mistress,  every  shop-keeper  his  wife.  In  all 
the  throng  the  pilot,  the  man  who  collects 
the  fares,  the  engineer,  and  I  were  the  only 
individuals. 

It  did  not  matter  to  the  other  three,  doubt- 
less, who  had  their  duties  to  attend  to  ;  but 
me  it  filled  with  a  sense  of  my  obtrusive- 
ness  that  was  almost  embarrassment.  I  felt 
like  a  chaperon  on  a  picnic.  Not  for  the 
world  would  I  have  annoyed  these  merry- 
makers, yet  I  had  to  look  somewhere,  and 
I  saw  in  growing  consternation  that  I  could 
turn  my  gaze  nowhere  except  to  the  river 
without  breaking  in  upon  a  flirtation,  a  love- 
affair,  or  a  family  council.  Then,  at  the  very 
height  of  my  quandary,  something  kindly 
happened  to  set  me  at  ease.  On  the  bench 
opposite,  a  young  soldier,  who  was  sitting 
with  his  arm  about  a  little  servant-girl,  looked 

[  168  ] 


Le  Modele 


Love  in  Paris 

up  after  a  whispered  confidence  (which  must 
have  been  mischievous;  for  she  had  uttered 
a  low  giggle  of  protesting  pleasure),  caught 
my  eye,  saw  that  I  was  looking  at  him,  gave 
me  a  stare  devoid  of  interest,  resentment,  or 
sheepishness,  turned  back  to  his  mate,  and 
kissed  her  soberly  (behind  the  ear).  There 
was  neither  bravado  nor  defiance  of  my  ob- 
servation in  the  act.  He  simply  did  not  care. 
Incredible  as  it  seems  to  an  Anglo-Saxon, 
he  did  not;  neither  did  any  of  the  other  two 
or  three  hundred  people  on  that  boat.  I 
stared  now  right  and  left  for  fifteen  minutes, 
but  I  might  have  been  a  stuffed  cat  in  a  cellar 
and  they  sportive  mice,  for  all  they  minded. 
It  was  an  instructive  quarter  of  an  hour,  and 
as  amusing  as  a  story  of  Courteline's  ;  but  at 
the  end  of  it  I  turned  away  with  a  sudden 
inexplicable  petulance  and  took  to  regard- 
ing the  river.  I  thought  again  of  ginger- 
bread with  raisins  in. 

The  machine-shops  and  the  factories  were 
past  now.  We  had  reached  the  outer  edge 

[  169] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

of  that  desolate  and  sordid  circle  which 
makes  Paris  a  jewel  set  in  mud.  Where  the 
Seine  curves  more  sharply,  we  stole  in  be- 
tween the  islands  of  Billancourt  and  Seguin. 
The  river  here  was  as  smooth  as  the  sky, 
only  rippling  into  one  soft  diagonal  fold 
where  the  bow  of  the  boat  cut  it.  The  tall 
slim  poplars  on  the  He  Seguin  were  repeated 
line  for  line  in  the  water  beneath,  but  less 
delicate,  less  softly  green  above  than  below, 
as  an  idea  of  a  thing  is  always  lovelier  than 
the  thing  itself.  A  silence  had  fallen  upon 
the  deck,  but  not  the  silence  of  reflection 
and  resignation  an  autumn  afternoon  would 
bring.  Out  of  this  radiant,  perfect,  fruitful 
day  there  stole  to  one  who  looked  a  sense 
of  vibrant,  exultant  joy  in  existence.  I  felt 
it  shudder  through  me  and  knew,  though  I 
did  not  look  round,  that  the  others  felt  it 
too,  and  that  the  soldier  had  tightened  his 
arm  about  the  waist  of  his  bonne  amie. 

Saint-Cloud  finally,  and  every  one  strug- 
gling to  disembark  at  once.  The  boat  would 

[  170  ] 


Love  in  Paris 

go  on  still  to  Suresnes,  but  not  I,  with  the 
nearer  prospect  of  the  park,  the  wood,  and 
the  cascades  before  me.  Besides,  to  go  far- 
ther would  be,  through  the  vagaries  of  the 
river,  to  draw  nearer  the  city.  The  crowd 
knew  best. 

He  who  has  not  seen  Saint-Cloud  is  to  be 
pitied.  Saint-Germain  with  its  forest,  its 
castle,  and  the  wide  view  from  its  high  ter- 
race, is  nobler,  Chantilly  is  more  exquisite, 
but  Saint-Cloud  is  the  most  human.  It  is  so 
close  to  Paris,  —  only  three  sous  away  by 
boat,  —  and  there  is  an  ironic  amusement  in 
the  thought  that  the  common  people  come 
and  go  now  just  as  formerly  the  court  came 
and  went.  There  is  no  illusion  of  country 
to  be  had  here.  Even  when  lying  in  the  high 
grass,  with  all  about  one  the  green  trunks  of 
trees  supporting  a  foliage  so  thick  that  the 
sunlight  cannot  penetrate  directly,  but  steals 
through  the  translucent  leaves  in  a  soft  dis- 
seminated haze,  one  is  aware,  beneath  the 
buzzing  of  the  bees  and  the  thousand  deli- 

[  171  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

cate  forest-sounds,  of  the  low  hum  of  the 
city;  from  the  edge  of  the  wooded  hill 
above  the  cascade  the  Eiffel  Tower,  the 
white  cupolas  of  the  Sacre  Cceur,  and  the 
dome  of  the  Invalides,  are  to  be  seen, 
dwarfed  but  distinct.  This  closeness  in  touch 
with  life  is  what  I  most  love  about  Saint- 
Cloud.  Landscapes  are  painted  without  fig- 
ures or  with  vague  unreal  ones;  we  are 
accustomed  to  think  of  natural  beauty  and 
actual  prosaic  existence  as  incompatible. 
Saint-Cloud  proves  that  they  are  not.  The 
final  effect,  to  be  sure,  is  that  of  a  compro- 
mise; but  if  in  the  adjustment  beauty  is  not 
at  its  highest,  far  less  is  existence  at  its  dull- 
est; what  the  one  has  lost  the  other  has 
more  than  gained.  At  Versailles  I  am  con- 
scious of  a  pang  of  unhappiness  in  the  sight 
of  these  black-trousered-and-coated  men  and 
dingily  dressed  women  swarming  about  the 
fountains  and  up  the  steps  of  the  Little  Tri- 
anon. It  is  not  so  much  that  they  are  ugly, 
—  though  from  a  decorative  point  of  view 

[    V2   ] 


Love  in  Paris 

they  are,  —  as  that  there,  where  the  memo- 
ries of  the  gorgeous  aristocratic  past  cling 
about  everything,  they  —  and  I  —  are  des- 
perately out  of  place.  But  at  Saint-Cloud, 
where  the  aroma  of  the  past  is  only  a  faint 
lingering  perfume  and  the  present  is  all 
about  one,  I  would  not  permanently  ex- 
change the  spectacle  of  these  working-men 
and  shop-girls  for  the  presence  of  the  lords 
and  ladies  of  the  court,  who  wandered  here 
sometimes  under  Louis  XVI,  making  love 
lightly,  whispering  assertions  of  eternal  en- 
durance for  passions  that  would  last  a  month 
— or  less;  behaving,  in  short,  for  all  their 
grace  and  breeding,  in  much  the  same  man- 
ner as  this  canaille  they  would  have  despised. 
Meanwhile  I  strolled  on,  climbing  the 
hill,  and  getting  always  farther  into  the 
wood.  Sometimes  I  would  emerge  upon  a 
clearing  that  would  be  all  ablaze  with  pop- 
pies; but  whether  in  meadow  or  forest,  ev- 
erywhere there  were  people,  and  always  by 
twos  except  when  there  were  children  to 

[  i73  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

augment  the  number.  Once,  in  a  sunny  little 
hollow,  I  came  upon  a  party  of  three, —  a 
man,  a  woman,  and  a  baby.  The  man  lay  on 
his  back,  his  coat  off  and  rolled  under  his 
head  for  a  pillow.  He  had  covered  his  face 
with  a  red  handkerchief  and  was  slumbering 
in  heavy  stertorous  content.  It  was  hot.  The 
woman  had  removed  her  shirt-waist  and  sat, 
her  brown  arms  and  shoulders  glistening,  her 
head  bent  over,  and  her  hands  resting  on  the 
ground.  She  looked  up  as  I  passed  and  stared 
at  me  without  embarrassment.  Why  should 
she  have  been  ashamed  ?  Clothes  were  made 
to  keep  the  cold  from  our  bodies  —  for  no- 
thing else.  She  was  right,  I  thought.  When 
her  clothes  had  changed  from  a  blessing  to  a 
discomfort,  she  simply  took  them  off  with- 
out shame.  She  was  right,  for  she  was  nat- 
ural. It  was  I  who  was  wrong,  for  not  daring 
to  do  as  much. 

I  threw  myself  down  at  last  beneath  some 
great  elms,  in  the  green  twilight  of  whose 
shadow  I  could  lie  and  yet  gaze  out  upon  a 

[  i74] 


Love  in  Paris 

sunny  meadow  beyond,  that  fairly  flamed 
with  the  sleepy  red  flowers.  Here  surely  I 
should  be  spying  on  no  one  (the  scruple  was 
for  myself) ;  but  I  had  scarcely  stretched 
myself  on  the  ground,  when  I  became  aware 
of  a  murmur  of  voices  drifting  to  me  from  a 
near-by  thicket,  and  despite  myself  I  began 
turning  the  sounds  into  words.  (One's  ears, 
it  would  seem,  have  no  connection  with 
one's  conscience.) 

"  Mats  siy  —  encore  plus.  Tu  le  sais  bien. 
It's  you  who  love  me  less  — " 

"I!  —  Ah,  Jacques!" 

And  so  forth. 

Banal  ?  Yes,  profoundly,  limitlessly  banal ; 
and  in  being  so,  very  characteristic  of  Saint- 
Cloud.  You  must  not  go  to  Saint-Cloud  to 
find  a  bright  new  idea  that  no  one  has  ever 
had  before.  You  will  find  only  the  old  ones 
there  that  all  people  have  in  common.  That 
is  why  Saint-Cloud  is  so  important.  We  pass 
our  lives  in  a  futile  attempt  to  avoid  the 
banal.  The  fear  of  having  feelings,  and  espe- 

[  i75  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

cially  thoughts,  that  others  have  had  is  a 
bugbear  to  us.  Our  goal  is  to  be  as  different 
as  possible  from  every  one  else  —  original,  in 
short.  We  do  not  see,  or  seeing  do  not  feel, 
that  the  vital  ideas  and  emotions  are  just 
those  we  have  in  common  —  that  all  the 
rest  have  little  value.  The  man  who  quotes 
proverbs  is  insupportable,  it  is  true ;  but  that 
is  not  because  he  expresses  thoughts  thou- 
sands of  men  have  had,  but  because  he  is  not 
thinking  at  all,  only  making  believe  to  think, 
with  his  parrot-like  repetition  of  a  ready- 
made  phrase.  It  is  exasperating  to  be  told 
that  a  rolling  stone  gathers  no  moss  ;  but  to 
hear  the  same  familiar  truth  expressed  in 
words  that  show  the  thought  to  exist  in  the 
speaker's  mind  is  not  exasperating.  The  dif- 
ficulty is,  not  to  lose  sight  of  the  significance 
of  the  banal,  not  to  find  people  less  interest- 
ing because  they  resemble  one  another,  not 
to  find  daily  happenings  any  the  less  wonder- 
ful that  they  are  daily ;  to  keep  always  be- 
fore us  the  marvelous  quality  of  the  usual. 

[  i76] 


Love  in  Paris 

"What  a  character  for  a  book !"  we  think, 
—  we  petty  scribblers,  —  when  every  once 
in  a  while  we  meet  an  eccentric.  Not  at  all. 
There  is  no  need  to  put  him  in  a  book ;  there 
is  nothing  to  explain.  His  peculiarities  have, 
just  because  they  are  peculiarities,  but  slight 
bearing  on  life;  to  transcribe  them  is  a  mat- 
ter of  photography.  The  great  novelist  is  he 
who  takes  the  common  experience  of  ordi- 
nary people,  and  so  vitalizes  and  interprets  it 
as  to  make  us,  for  the  moment  at  least,  see 
it  as  the  wealth  it  really  is.  Only,  when  such 
a  one  arrives,  we  are  too  stupid  to  under- 
stand that  he  has  but  made  evident  the  mean- 
ing of  old  formulas,  and  praise  him  for  his 
new  ideas. 

The  drowsy  babble  of  the  lovers'  voices 
made  my  eyes  droop,  and  I  fell  asleep.  — 
When  I  awoke  the  shadows  were  long  and 
cool,  and  the  poppies  glowed  more  dully  in 
the  field.  I  looked  at  my  watch  :  it  was 
nearly  seven.  So  I  strolled  down  out  of  the 
wood  and  the  gardens  into  the  village,  and 

[  *77  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

followed  the  quay  until  I  had  reached  the 
Restaurant  Belvedere.  I  could  not  go  wrong 
in  dining  here  ;  for  the  wide  terrasse  was 
covered  with  little  tables  at  which,  always  in 
pairs,  were  half  the  people  I  had  seen  on  the 
boat.  But  I  found  a  vacant  place,  slipped 
into  it,  and  sat  with  my  eyes  half-closed, 
gazing  across  at  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  that 
swept  its  greenness  graciously  down  to  the 
river.  It  was  twilight.  The  warm  evening 
breeze  had  sprung  up,  stirring  my  hair  softly, 
but  filling  me  somehow  with  a  wistful  dis- 
content. 

"Monsieur  desire?"  asked  the  waiter  re- 
spectfully. 

"  Gingerbread  with  raisins  in,"  I  replied 
absently.   I  was  not  quite  awake  yet. 

"Monsieur??" 

"  Oh !  " — I  started.  "  Je  veux  diner.  Don't 
ask  me.  Bring  me  anything,  —  only  not 
chicken." 

"  Bien,  monsieur." 

He  might  have  cheated  me,  —  I  was  in  no 

[  i78  ] 


Love  in  Paris 

mind  to  quibble  about  money,  —  but  I  do 
not  think  he  did;  not  much  anyway.  I  sat 
for  a  long  time  over  the  dinner,  eating  me- 
chanically, sipping  the  delicate  bordeaux 
(I  was  less  vague  in  ordering  the  bordeaux), 
and  watching  the  sky  fade  from  gold  to 
mauve.  It  came  to  me  suddenly  that  I  had 
dreamed  something  very  beautiful  asleep  on 
the  hill,  but  I  could  not  recall  what.  Only 
the  mood  of  the  dream  remained,  haunt- 
ingly  delicate.  The  dreams  we  cannot  re- 
member are  always  the  loveliest.  Across  the 
Seine  the  poplars  had  faded  to  silver  gray 
and  their  reflections  were  blurred  together 
in  the  water.  Lights  began  to  show  here  and 
there.  If  there  had  been  something  perturb- 
ing about  the  day,  what  can  I  say  of  the 
evening  ?  Its  beauty  ached  through  one  like 
pain.  I  pushed  back  my  chair  at  last  on  the 
crackling  gravel,  paid  the  bill  hastily,  and 
walked  away,  followed  for  some  little  time 
by  the  other  diners'  voices,  high  and  slender 
through  the  still  air. 

[  i79  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

The  little  tramway  of  the  Val  d'Or  car- 
ries one  swiftly  back  to  Paris  from  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Saint-Cloud,  through  and  beside 
the  Bois.  Yet  if  you  asked  me  for  advice  I 
should  hardly  dare  counsel  you  to  take  it  at 
half-past  eight  of  an  August  evening.  Beau- 
tiful as  the  ride  is  then,  it  is  a  thousand  times 
more  melancholy.  There  were  few  other 
passengers  in  the  tram  with  me.  A  man  and 
his  wife,  she  dozing,  her  head  resting  on  her 
husband's  shoulder,  and  two  sleeping  babies 
sprawling  in  tangled  confusion  over  the  legs 
of  both  parents,  were  all,  during  most  of  the 
trip.  As  we  fled  onward  through  the  wood, 
the  lamps  of  the  open  car  spread  a  dim  cir- 
cle of  light  about  us,  evoking  strange  shadows 
and  the  ghosts  of  trees.  But  the  effect  of 
even  this  was  not  so  profoundly  sad  as  the 
impression  I  got  when  we  whirled  swiftly 
past  some  brightly  illuminated  restaurant 
(like  that  of  the  Chateau  de  Madrid)  and 
caught  for  an  instant  the  tinkle  of  laughter 
and  the  clatter  of  plate  and  glass. 

[  1 80  ] 


Cafe  in  the  Bois 


Love  in  Paris 

At  the  Porte  Maillot  I  descended.  The 
depression  was  lost  in  the  brilliancy  of  the 
reentered  city  ;  instead,  I  was  conscious  of  a 
reaction  into  exhilaration.  It  seemed  incred- 
ible that  there  were  Parisians  still  left  at  Saint- 
Cloud.  The  popular  impression  (that  became 
promptly  mine)  was,  clearly,  that  it  would 
be  folly  to  be  at  home  on  a  night  like  this, 
so  I  took  a  cab  and  drove  slowly  down  the 
Avenue  de  la  Grande  Armee  and  the  Champs 
Elysees.  That  wide  white  pleasure  street  was 
flecked  with  open  carriages.  Not  the  splen- 
did equipages  that  fill  it  to  overflowing  in 
winter,  but  dingy  democratic  sapins  like  the 
one  I  rode  in.  Cab  after  cab  approached, 
met  mine,  and  rolled  by,  all  at  so  nearly 
identical  a  rate  of  motion  that  to  watch 
them  was  like  watching  floating  chips  of 
wood  in  a  river ;  and  on  a  careful  average 
five  out  of  six  held  each  a  pair  of  lovers. 
Unless  you  have  yourself  driven  down  the 
Champs  Elysees  of  an  August  night  I  de- 
spair of  making  you  believe  that,  —  because 

[  181  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

it  is  true,  and  truth,  whether  stranger  or  not, 
is  less  plausible  than  fiction,  which  is  con- 
structed with  especial  reference  to  being 
believed.  If,  furthermore,  you  ask  me  how 
I  knew  that  the  couples  I  saw  were  lovers,  I 
reply  that  no  mistake  was  possible. 

The  lack  of  self-consciousness  in  these 
Parisians,  and  their  admirable  unconcern  for 
what  others  might  think,  set  me  marveling 
once  more.  I  had  often  wondered  why  in 
Paris  one  should  be  conscious  of  a  harmony, 
a  perpetually  reinforced  unity  of  impression, 
that  one  misses  in  other  large  cities.  The 
explanation  was  clear  enough  now :  it  was 
because  the  people  of  Paris  were  in  keeping 
with  their  surroundings.  (And  I  saw  that 
this  also  had  been  at  the  root  of  my  liking 
for  Saint-Cloud.)  True,  the  pressure  of  mid- 
dle-class philistinism  is  to  be  felt  here  as 
elsewhere ;  but  whereas  in  London  its  de- 
pressing influence  is  paramount,  here  it  is 
only  a  minor  force  struggling  against  the 
spirit  of  Paris,  which  is  pagan,  and  which 

[  182  ] 


Love  in  Paris 

on  such  a  night  as  this  rises  like  a  great  flood, 
sweeping  everything  before  it.  Here  was  a 
night  that  fairly  besought  one  to  love.  Not 
a  sound  in  the  air,  not  a  soft  breath  from  the 
warm  breeze,  like  the  touch  of  a  woman's 
fingers  on  one's  cheek,  that  spoke  of  any- 
thing else.  Anglo-Saxon  lovers  would  have 
resisted  the  appeal  and  sat  stiffly  side  by  side 
without  daring  to  embrace,  for  fear  of"  what 
people  might  think  "  ;  or  at  least  would  have 
awaited  a  dark  turning.  But  in  Paris  what 
is  natural  is  not  to  be  ashamed  of.  French 
philosophers  reason  this  out,  French  poets 
sing  it  (scarcely  a  year  goes  by  that  some 
new  symbolic  play  in  verse  depicting  the 
struggles  of  pagan  Nature  and  Christian  as- 
ceticism, the  sympathy  all  with  the  former, 
is  not  produced  at  the  Odeon),  and,  more 
important,  because  a  surer  index  to  the  real 
spirit  of  the  race,  the  masses  feel  it.  Perhaps 
the  truth  is  that  there  is  rather  an  aesthetic 
than  a  moral  ideal  in  France,  that  beauty 
takes  precedence  over  right.   If  there  is  any 

[  183  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

justice  in  so  broad  a  generalization  I  am  not 
sure  that  the  French  ideal  is  not  the  more 
trustworthy.  (I  do  not  like  professed  aes- 
thetes ;  but  that  is  because  they  have  nar- 
rowed and  warped  the  meaning  of  beauty.) 
For  while  the  words  "right"  and  "wrong" 
have,  it  would  seem,  only  a  relative  signifi- 
cance, and  are  even  at  that  so  confused  that 
half  the  time  we  cannot  decide  which  is 
which,  beauty  stands  out  as  something  abso- 
lute ;  our  individual  conceptions  of  it,  as  we 
grow  in  fineness  of  feeling,  resemble  each 
other  strangely.  Not  that  I  believe  the  lov- 
ers in  the  taxi-cabs  to  have  been  behaving 
as  they  did  for  such  reasons.  Oh  dear,  no ! 
Most  of  them  probably  did  not  know  how 
to  reason,  and  anyway  they  had  no  time. 
Nevertheless  I  felt  that  they  were  acting  — 
by  instinct,  if  you  will,  —  harmoniously  (and 
harmony  is  the  first  law  of  beauty),  instead 
of  being  consciously  good.  For  on  much  of 
the  affection  that  came  under  my  eyes  this 
August  evening  —  particularly  on  that  dis- 

[  184] 


Love  in  Paris 

played  the  most  intensely  —  I  fear  that  the 
Church  would  have  frowned. 

Through  all  the  mile-long  splendor  of  the 
avenue,  the  carriages  followed  one  another 
a  few  yards  apart,  —  black,  shabby,  ordinary, 
like  actors  in  street-dress  rehearsing  on  a 
stage  set  for  a  drama  of  gods.  Paris  was  very 
like  Saint-Cloud  in  its  humanity  —  or  per- 
haps it  was  Saint-Cloud  that  resembled  Paris : 
for  in  this  white  sweeping  drive,  befitting 
the  pomp  and  luxury  of  a  princely  caval- 
cade, these  hackney  cabs  and  their  unaristo- 
cratic  occupants  were  not  out  of  place. 

In  the  long  vista  a  fiacre,  still  far  away, 
appeared  somehow  taller  and  more  shadowy 
than  the  others ;  as  it  approached  it  resolved 
itself  into  one  like  the  rest,  but  the  hood  of 
which  had  been  raised.  Within  were  a  cou- 
ple exchanging  the  most  frantic  kisses  I  had 
yet  remarked,  and  with  such  desperate  ra- 
pidity that  one  thrilled  at  the  thought  of 
the  number  they  would  have  achieved  by 
the  time  they  reached  the  Place  de  l'fitoile. 

[  185  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

I  lay  back  on  my  cushions  and  laughed  and 
laughed.  For  do  you  think  they  had  raised 
the  hood  in  an  attempt  at  concealment? 
Not  they !  In  the  event  of  an  extremely 
obliging  rain,  or  of  a  pedestrian's  tardy  de- 
sire to  stare,  once  you  are  well  past  him,  the 
hood  of  your  Parisian  cab  is  of  some  little 
service.  As  protection  from  the  prompter 
gaze  of  loungers  or  that  of  the  occupants  of 
other  vehicles,  it  is  worse  than  useless.  Not 
only  does  it  disguise  nothing,  but  the  fact 
of  its  being  up  in  fine  weather  is  the  signal 
for  a  close  and  curious  inspection  by  all 
within  range.  No,  this  superlatively  amo- 
rous pair  had  raised  it  in  the  pretense  that 
they  believed  they  were  doing  something 
wrong,  and  did  not  want  to  be  seen;  in  the 
effort  to  realize  the  intoxicating  impression 
of  secret  sin.  I  could  only  laugh  in  appre- 
ciation of  the  refinement ;  but  a  more  seri- 
ous observer  might  have  frowned.  For  there 
was  more  of  what  is  bad  about  Paris  in  this 
subterfuge  than  is  at  first  apparent.   If  Paris 

[  186] 


Love  in  Paris 

were  thoroughly  pagan,  it  would  be  as 
moral  a  city  as  exists ;  moreover,  it  would 
have  a  morality  to  which  an  intelligent  man 
could  assent.  But  it  is  not.  That  the  sex- 
relation  between  people  not  united  in  mar- 
riage is  more  facile  here  than  elsewhere  seems 
to  me  at  times  a  step  away  from  the  unnat- 
uralness  of  monogamy  (it  is  only  convention 
that  makes  polygamy  vile)  and  so  right. 
What  is  bad  is  that  in  theory  it  is  still  held 
to  be  wrong.  From  the  resulting  paradox 
there  is  derived  that  unwholesome  sophisti- 
cated pleasure  that  invests  an  act  at  once 
officially  considered  wicked  and  not  person- 
ally felt  to  be  so.  And  the  children?  Yes, 
that  is  the  difficulty.  We  have  a  long  way 
to  go  before  a  satisfactory  system  of  poly- 
gamy can  be  established. 

But  the  lovers'  carriage  was  gone,  and  I 
was  conscious  again  of  the  strange  discon- 
tent, stronger  now,  sweeping  in  upon  me 
like  a  great  wave.  The  mood  of  the  night 
was  too  overpoweringly  complete,  its  pres- 

[  187  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

sure  too  intense.  It  was  like  the  persistent 
throbbing  of  one  note  in  a  symphony.  I 
touched  the  cochers  arm  with  my  stick,  and 
bade  him  drive  me  home. 

"It  is  instructive,"  I  said  to  myself  when 
I  stood  once  more  on  my  little  balcony,  "to 
watch  from  outside.  If  you  had  been  part 
of  this  day,  my  friend,  you  would  not  have 
understood  it." 

I  had  spoken  aloud  to  convince  myself 
that  what  I  said  was  true;  but  the  lack  of 
enthusiasm  in  my  voice  was  too  apparent, 
and  suddenly,  without  quite  knowing  how, 
I  found  myself  within  at  my  table. 

"My  dear  Linette,"  I  wrote,  "  I  was  out 
at  Saint-Cloud  to-day — all  alone.  It  was 
very  beautiful,  and  there  were  red  poppies 
everywhere.  But  I  was  unhappy:  for  I  re- 
membered when  I  had  the  poppies  and  you 
too,  ma  petite  Linette.  Have  you  forgot- 
ten ?  If  you  have  nothing  better  to  do  to- 
morrow, I  wonder  whether  you  would  not 
care  to  —  " 


Linette 


\ 


:•* 


' 


Towers  of  St.  Sulpice 


In  my  Court 


r 


•i    „ 


VII 

In  My   Court 

HE  horse-chestnuts  in  the  court 
beneath  my  bed-room  window 
have  been  bare  a  long  time,  but 
there  are  still  some  leaves  left  on 
the  elms.  There  will  be  few,  though,  by- 
to-morrow,  for  the  mid-October  wind  has 
caught  them  and  sends  them  whirling  down- 
ward. They  sweep  over  the  hard  ground, 
curl  like  brown  foam  from  the  tops  of  the 
neat  piles  into  which  the  concierge  has  raked 
them,  and  rustle  across  the  green  benches  on 
which  the  nurses  knit  in  the  morning  and 
the  bourgeois  read  their  papers  in  the  late 
afternoon.  The  children  are  wild  with  joy. 
Calling  to  one  another  exultantly,  they  plow 
their  way  back  and  forth  through  the  crack- 
ling heaps  of  leaves,  and  clutch  them  up  by 

[  191  1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

the  handful  to  let  them  fall  again  in  showers 
of  dull  red  and  tarnished  gold.  There  are 
two  who  do  nothing  but  roll  persistently  all 
day  long.  From  time  to  time  their  nurses 
desert  the  knitting,  to  rush  across  volubly 
and  drag  them  to  their  feet;  but  no  power 
on  earth  can  keep  them  long  upright,  and 
left  to  themselves  they  flop  to  the  ground 
and  roll  again,  silently  and  deliriously.  The 
high  thin  voices  of  the  others  rise  to  me  as  I 
stand  at  my  bed-room  window.  I  like  chil- 
dren, and  they  sometimes  like  me,  —  not  al- 
ways, but  a  little  oftener  than  their  elders 
do  perhaps,  —  because  I  do  not  feel  either 
condescension  or  embarrassment  in  their 
presence;  but  to-day  I  would  not  go  into 
the  court.  The  frankness  with  which  chil- 
dren forget  is  almost  as  painful  as  the  hypoc- 
risy with  which  their  parents  pretend  not  to 
have  forgotten. 

I  used  frequently  to  sit  there  last  summer 
with  the  muffled  sound  of  Paris  in  my  ears 
and  the  thought  of  Paris  in  my  mind,  while 

[  192  ] 


In  the  Garden  of  the  Luxembourg 


■ 


' 


In  My  Court 

the  sunlight  crept  along  the  bench,  and  the 
children  played  their  games  around  me. 
Sometimes  I  would  awake  with  a  start 
to  find  my  seat  a  house  to  which  a  visit 
was  being  paid,  or  an  automobile  speeding 
through  the  Bois,  and  then  I  would  inquire 
whether  I  were  in  the  way,  and  the  children 
would  chorus  courteously,  "Oh,  not  at  all, 
monsieur!  Ne  vous  derangez pas,  monsieur"  ; 
after  which  I  would  forget  them  again,  and 
they  me. 

At  other  times,  when  the  play  was  less 
intense,  I  would  have  scraps  of  conversation 
with  one  or  another.  A  little  blonde  girl  of 
ten,  with  a  severe  dignity  of  manner  that 
sometimes  deserted  her  when  the  games  were 
exciting,  spoke  earnestly  with  me  about  the 
weather,  and  informed  me  often  and  with 
pride  that  she,  her  parents,  and  three  minor 
members  of  her  family  —  all  equally  blonde, 
but  of  degrees  of  dignity  diminishing  mathe- 
matically with  their  ages,  clear  to  the  young- 
est, who  was  four  and  not  dignified  at  all  — 

[  i93  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

were  soon  to  go  to  the  country  for  a  few 
weeks.  In  Paris  the  words  "  je  vais  passer 
quelques  semaines  a  la  campagne"  are  as  im- 
pressive as  "  I  am  going  to  run  down  to  my 
country-house,"  in  America.  I  learned  later 
that  the  destination  of  the  blonde  family  was 
only  Saint-Denis.  But  at  ten  one  has  not  yet 
begun  to  make  invidious  distinctions.  There 
is  Paris  and  there  is  the  country.  Saint- 
Denis  means  no  less  than  Trouville. 

There  were  many  other  children  who 
played  in  the  court,  —  for  the  house  was  large 
and  the  apartments  were  numerous ;  but  there 
was  one  so  different  from  the  others  that  I  fell 
into  the  habit  of  looking  up  from  my  book 
to  watch  him  when  he  was  there,  and  of 
wondering  about  his  absence  when  he  was 
not.  He  was  a  child  of  six,  with  an  oval  face, 
chestnut  curls  that  he  had  an  odd  little  way 
of  shaking  back  from  his  forehead,  and  large 
brown  eyes  strangely  flecked  with  gold.  No 
one  was  ever  more  unmistakably  an  aristo- 
crat than  this  six-year-old  boy.   The  uncon- 

[  194  ] 


In  My  Court 

scious  grace  of  movement,  the  gentleness  of 
manner,  the  instinctive  courtesy,  which,  if 
anything  tangible,  are  the  signs  of  aristoc- 
racy—  he  possessed  them  all;  and  yet  his 
name  was  just  Etienne  Dupont,  and  Dupont 
carries  with  it  about  as  much  connotative 
distinction  in  French  as  Jones  in  English. 
To  me,  aristocracy,  or  what  I  mean  by  it,  — 
for  no  word  has  so  many  varying  interpre- 
tations, —  seems  one  of  the  most  gracious 
things  in  life,  bringing  out  the  charm  in 
commonplaces,  lending  beauty  to  a  word  or 
a  glance,  lingering  like  a  perfume  above  bare 
existence.  Impossible  of  adequate  definition, 
it  is  the  Something-Else  like  that  which  re- 
mains in  a  picture  after  one  has  analyzed  it. 
The  more  I  have  looked  for  and  found  it, 
the  more  certain  I  have  become  that  aristoc- 
racy is  never  acquired,  always  a  matter  of 
birth,  but  not  at  all  a  matter  of  family.  It 
is  perhaps  a  fair  presumption  that  aristocrats 
are  more  likely  to  come  of  a  stock  which 
has  already  produced  many ;  but  roturiers  are 

[  i95  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

born  every  day  into  families  which  have 
been  noble  since  the  crusades,  and  aristocrats 
into  those  that  dwell  in  tenements,  or  — 
which  is  more  astounding  —  into  those  of 
the  lower-middle-class.  So  the  miracle  was 
not  that  Etienne's  name  should  have  been 
Dupont,  but  that  there  should  have  been  no- 
thing to  explain  the  child  in  the  father.  He 
was  a  stout  red-faced  man,  kindly,  I  was 
sure,  but  with  a  frank  love  of  vulgarity, 
if  I  might  judge  from  the  stories  I  over- 
heard him  relating  to  other  fathers  and  from 
his  gross  resounding  laugh.  He  was  a  clerk 
in  the  office  of  the  mayor  of  the  arrondisse- 
ment.  Do  not  think  me  unjust  toward  Mon- 
sieur Dupont.  I  was  not  dismissing  him  as  a 
man — only  as  an  aristocrat.  Aristocracy  is 
not  one  of  the  things  that  it  takes  long  study 
to  discern,  like  courage  or  character.  It  is  a 
kind  of  fineness  that  reveals  itself  in  a  thou- 
sand ways,  and  is  as  easily  discernible  in  a 
man  at  first  sight  as  after  a  long  intimacy.  I 
did  not  know  the  mother,  —  she  had  been 

[  196  ] 


In  My  Court 

dead  five  years ;  but  I  inquired  about  her  of 
the  little  old  man  with  the  skull-cap.  He 
has  lived  for  longer  than  he  can  remember 
in  the  house  and  has  observed  three  genera- 
tions of  its  inhabitants. 

"  C'etait  une  brave  femme"  he  said,  "petite, 
grasse,  bavarde  —  non>  pas  du  tout  distinguee. 
Elle  ressemblait  beaucoup  a  son  mart.  A  strange 
child,  le  petit,  to  be  born  of  such  parents, 
riest-ce  pas?" 

Somehow  the  answer  pleased  me.  I  liked 
to  think  of  Etienne  as  a  changeling.  The  se- 
cret may,  however,  have  been,  that  I  could 
not  follow  Monsieur  and  Madame  Dupont 
back  to  their  own  childhood.  Nothing  is  so 
fragile,  so  easily  lost,  as  the  strange  quality 
that  produces  this  delicacy  of  sentiment,  this 
charm  of  manner.  Rare  gift  of  the  gods  as 
it  is,  it  should  be  immortal;  but  it  is  not.  It 
is  an  exquisite  flower  that  must  be  carefully 
tended  if  it  is  to  live.  In  one  of  Mr.  Leonard 
Merrick's  novels  (which  I  am  amazed  that  so 
few  Americans  have  read  ;  for  it  is  as  delight- 

[  197  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

ful  as  a  fairy  tale  and  as  true  as  a  syllogism) 
the  hero,  being  in  quest  of  his  youth,  remem- 
bers a  little  girl  with  whom  he  had  played  as  a 
child,  and  who  possessed  that  gentle  distinc- 
tion (though  he  did  not  give  it  a  name)  which 
so  charmed  me  in  Etienne.  He  sought  her 
out  and  found  —  a  vain,  shallow-minded  wo- 
man, with  a  loud  voice,  a  simper,  and  a  habit 
of  noise.  It  seemed  improbable  that  the  Mon- 
sieur Dupont  whom  I  saw  occasionally  in  the 
court,  with  his  jovial  bonhomie,  and  his  com- 
monness, could  ever  have  had  anything  of  the 
fineness  I  saw  in  his  son  ;  but  it  was  not  im- 
possible. Even  Etienne  might  some  day  be- 
come—  but  I  refused  to  consider  that. 

Etienne  was  not  forward  in  play,  but  rather 
retiring.  He  was  in  no  sense  the  leader  of  his 
comrades  —  the  little  girl  of  the  yellow  pig- 
tails was  that.  Nevertheless  there  was  in  the 
attitude  of  the  other  children  toward  him  a 
gentleness  that  was  almost  deference.  Just 
as,  when  we  talk  with  a  man  whose  English  is 
choice  and  beautiful,  we  find  our  own  words 

[  198  ] 


In  My  Court 

becoming  more  careful,  so  with  this  child 
of  six  the  manners  of  his  playmates  were  no- 
ticeably better  than  with  one  another.  The 
youngest  of  the  blonde  children  might  fall 
on  his  face  and  wail  unheeded ;  but  I  saw 
the  most  boisterous  young  scapegrace  in  the 
court  turn  once  with  a  swift  solicitous,  "  Tu 
ne  fes  pas  fait  mal,  Etienne  f '  when  in  a 
rough  game  the  latter  had  been  thrown  to 
the  ground. 

The  child,  I  remarked,  as  I  watched  him 
more  closely,  had  another  quality  apart  from 
his  aristocracy  —  imagination.  It  was  not  he 
who  led  the  games,  but  it  was  he  who  created 
them ;  and  if  some  of  his  inventions  were 
puerile,  I  could  not  but  admire  the  compli- 
cated originality  of  others.  He  did  not  speak 
to  me  except  to  wish  me  "Bon  jour"  or  "  Bon 
soir,"  with  a  shy  smile  so  radiant  that  it  seemed 
to  me  pure  sunlight ;  but  seeing  the  interest 
I  was  too  clumsy  not  to  show  for  his  produc- 
tions, he  would  cast  me  from  time  to  time  a 
deprecating,  half-appealing  glance  in  which 

[  i99  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

there  was  something  of  the  poet  reading  his 
verses.  Then  one  day  he  discovered  the  game 
of  Ogre,  a  game  so  complex,  so  involved,  that 
I  despair  of  making  it  clear  to  you.  As  the 
exposition  of  the  game  progressed,  a  rever- 
ent silence  fell  upon  the  listeners.  Etienne's 
face  glowed  with  inspiration,  and  he  spoke 
breathlessly,  finding  successive  rules  as  Shel- 
ley must  have  found  successive  words  for 
"The  Skylark."  It  will  be  enough  for  you 
to  know  that  an  ogre  inhabited  a  castle 
(otherwise  one  of  the  green  benches)  which 
he,  being  lame,  could  not  leave.  But  the  cas- 
tle was  situate  in  a  thick  forest  where  many 
travelers  lost  their  way.  (I  would  stake  all  I 
have  that  Etienne  had  never  read  "The  Pil- 
grim's Progress.")  Unaware  that  the  castle 
was  so  dreadfully  occupied,  they  would  wel- 
come the  sight  of  it  joyfully,  and,  knocking 
for  admittance,  would,  under  certain  condi- 
tions, be  captured  ;  under  others,  set  aside  to 
fatten  ;  and  under  still  others  (most  diffi- 
cult), actually  eaten.    They  would  then,  if 

[  200  ] 


Old  Court  in  Rue  Vercingetorix 


y^^^'^L     1 


m 


P 


%><f?F 


^'fjjfi 


—  K     - 


■"**3* 


up 


01-0      COURT      I N 

R.U6,   V£R£M«££rccux 


In  My  Court 

uneaten,  be  rescued  by  knights  of  Charle- 
magne's court ;  if  eaten,  brought  to  life  by 
a  good  fairy  who  could  put  the  ogre  to  sleep 
with  a  certain  magic  formula.  This  will  suf- 
fice, but  this  was  not  all.  The  complications 
of  the  game  were  innumerable.  My  brain 
reeled  at  the  magnificence  of  the  conception. 

"But,"  asked  the  little  girl  of  the  blonde 
pig-tails  with  her  matter-of-fact  voice  (and 
the  answer  to  the  question  was  implied  in 
her  tone),  "but  who  shall  be  the  ogre?" 

There  was  a  chorus  of  "  Moi!"  "  Moil" 
"Moi!"  but  Etienne  shook  his  head  firmly. 
"No,"  he  said,  coming  toward  my  bench, 
and  looking  straight  at  me  out  of  his  great 
brown  eyes  in  which  the  tiny  points  of  yel- 
low shone  like  little  gold  stars,  "monsieur 
will  be  the  ogre." 

The  others  drew  back  with  a  sudden  re- 
straint that  was  one  fourth  the  hostility  of 
little  savages  toward  an  intruder,  and  three 
fourths  the  sheepishness  of  miniature  bour- 
geois shocked  by  an  outraged  rule  of  conduct. 

[  201  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

But  there  was  neither  self-consciousness  nor 
boldness  about  Etienne,  —  only  confidence 
in  his  instinct.  He  was  the  aristocrat  through 
and  through  now,  without  a  trace  of  that 
concern-for-what-others-may-think  that  is 
the  profoundest  characteristic  of  the  middle 
class,  the  sign  at  once  of  its  importance  and 
its  pettiness,  of  the  depth  below  which  it 
cannot  sink  and  the  height  above  which 
it  cannot  rise.  Etienne  was  looking  at  me 
trustfully. 

"Yes,"  I  said  simply,  "I  will  be  the 
ogre." 

His  question  had  meant  more  to  me  than 
my  reply  could  possibly  mean  to  him.  There 
are  two  things  that  touch  the  heart  deeply, 
perhaps  because  they  are  so  rare.  The  one 
is  a  woman's  sudden  spontaneous  caress,  the 
other  the  impulsive  advances  of  an  unspoiled 
child.  In  the  emotion  caused  by  neither 
does  vanity  play  any  part. 

So  for  half  an  hour,  abandoning  my  dig- 
nity, I  played  at  Ogre,  with  a  fervor  which 

[  202  ] 


In  My  Court 


was  all  gratitude  to  Etienne,  making  fearful 
grimaces,  testing  tentatively  the  plumpness 
of  my  victims,  or  devouring  them  outright, 
while  they  shivered  in  excitement  or  uttered 
shrieks  of  delighted  terror,  —  for  they  were 
soon  won  over,  being  but  children  after  all, 
and  having  that  sense  of  the  dramatic  against 
which  no  other  instinct  of  the  French  heart 
can  long  hold  out,  — and  roaring  so  horribly 
that  the  nurses  forgot  their  knitting  for  ad- 
miration and  the  mothers  rushed  to  the 
windows  in  fear.  When  the  game  was  at  its 
height  Etienne  ran  swiftly  from  me. 

"Bon  soir, papa"  he  cried;  and  glancing 
up  I  saw  that  Monsieur  Dupont  had  entered 
the  court,  and  was  staring  at  us  in  surprise. 
He  was  just  home,  I  judged,  from  the 
mairie,  for  he  carried  his  black-leather  port- 
folio under  one  arm.  As  for  the  travelers, 
prisoners,  and  knights  of  Charlemagne's 
court,  they  had  stiffened  suddenly  into  rigid 
little  men  and  women  who  reminded  me 
sadly  of  photographs  in  a  family  album. 

[  203  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

Etienne  had  seized  his  father's  hand. 
"We  were  playing  Ogre,  papa,"  he  ex- 
plained.  "  Monsieur  was  the  ogre." 

"Ah?"  said  Monsieur  Dupont  looking  at 
me  uncomprehendingly. 

Etienne  drew  his  father  forward,  and  still 
holding  tight  to  him  with  one  hand,  held 
out  the  other  to  me.  "Thank  you,  mon- 
sieur," he  said  gravely.  "You  were  a  splen- 
did ogre.  Au  revoir,  monsieur." 

Monsieur  Dupont  raised  his  hat  to  me 
politely,  but  his  face  was  still  puzzled.  The 
French  bourgeois  seldom  plays  with  his 
children.  He  is  fond  of  them,  and  far  more 
prodigal  of  caresses  than  an  American  fa- 
ther, but  he  treats  them  always  as  though 
they  were  grown-up,  and  requires  of  them 
a  solemn  respect,  that  may  not  lessen  their 
affection  for  him,  but  that  destroys  the  pos- 
sibility of  sympathy.  They  have  no  pleasant 
half-way  stage,  but  leap  at  once  from  in- 
fancy to  manhood.  Even  the  games  played 
in  my  court  when  Etienne  was  absent  were, 

[  204  ] 


In  My  Court 

unless  they  were  mere  irrepressible  romping 
(and  they  were  seldom  that)  prim  and  dig- 
nified games.  The  recognized  wildness  of 
the  lad  between  eighteen  and  twenty-two 
when,  the  baccalaureat  passed,  and  business 
or  the  university  entered,  he  has  become  all 
at  once  his  own  master, —  a  wildness  often 
resembling  debauch,  —  is  perhaps  but  a  re- 
action from  this  philistinism  into  which  he 
has  been  crushed,  but  a  struggling  forth  of 
his  own  identity.  In  this  city,  where  the 
old  struggle  between  Paganism  and  Chris- 
tianity is  forever  going  on,  and  where  talent 
is  strewn  as  thickly  as  the  leaves  in  my  court, 
it  is  matter  for  conjecture  whether  he  will 
emerge  completely,  make  of  his  reaction  a 
philosophy,  and  leave  behind  him  a  great  or 
a  little  name;  or  whether,  incapable  of  think- 
ing, or  impeded  by  circumstances,  he  will 
return  to  the  caste  from  which  he  sprang; 
whether  he  will  be  one  of  the  class  that 
makes  France  preeminent,  or  one  of  that 
which  keeps  France  populous.   In  the  first 

[  205  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

case  the  reaction  will  be  good,  for  it  will 
have  served  toward  achievement ;  in  the  sec- 
ond harmful,  for  then  it  will  have  been  a 
force  making  against  his  happiness  in  the  life 
for  which  he  is  fitted. 

Two  or  three  days  later  I  went  again  into 
the  court.  The  children  greeted  me  cor- 
dially. 

"  But  where  is  Etienne  ? "  I  asked,  look- 
ing about  me. 

"  He  is  ill,  monsieur,"  said  one  solemnly. 

"  111  !  "  I  exclaimed.   "  Not  seriously  ? " 

"  Oh,  yes,  monsieur,  very  ill  indeed. 
Would  monsieur  play  at  Ogre  to-day  ? ' 

"  No,"  I  said,  "  not  to-day  —  another 
time  "  ;  and  left  the  court.  It  was  nothing, 
doubtless,  —  to  be  ill  is  always  in  a  child's 
mind  to  be  very  ill.  Nevertheless  I  was  wor- 
ried—  for  the  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  one 
concedes  to  another's  troubles.  Then  Sep- 
tember came  and  I  went  to  the  shore  for 
two  weeks,  and  forgot  Etienne  and  the  court 
in  the  joy  of  the  crisp  salt  air  and  the  sting- 

[  206  ] 


In  My  Court 

ing  spray  of  the  breakers  that  beat  upon  the 
Norman  coast. 

When,  having  driven  home  from  the  Gare 
Saint-Lazare  through  the  sunny  streets  on 
my  return  one  mid-September  afternoon, 
I  strode  buoyantly  into  the  court,  I  saw 
at  once  that  something  was  wrong.  The 
children  stood  about  in  groups  whispering, 
and  an  atmosphere  like  that  of  an  English 
Sunday  seemed  to  envelop  the  whole  enclo- 
sure. 

"§>u'est-ce  quil  y  a,  Marthe?"  I  asked 
the  little  blonde  girl. 

"  Etienne,  monsieur,"  she  replied,  with, 
beneath  the  half-comprehending  awe  of  her 
tone,  a  certain  pride  in  being  the  first  to 
break  the  news :  "  he  died  day  before  yester- 
day. The  funeral  has  just  been." 

You  have  known  it  all  along ;  you  have 
seen  ahead  from  the  beginning ;  for  to  you 
it  is  only  a  story,  —  a  too  simple  obvious 
story  you  must  find  it ;  but  to  me,  for  whom 
it  was  truth,  it  was  not  obvious,  and  I  would 

[  207  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

think  it  sacrilege  to  make  it  over  into  some- 
thing more  artistic,  better  constructed. 

I  was  lonely  that  evening,  and  went  to 
the  apartment  of  the  little  old  man  across 
the  hall.  He  welcomed  me  courteously  and 
gave  me  an  arm-chair  beside  his  before  the 
open  fire ;  for  the  nights  were  already  cool. 
I  spoke  to  him  of  Etienne. 

"  It  is  strange,"  I  said,  "  that  his  death 
should  make  me  unhappy,  —  a  child  of  six 
whom  I  saw  but  a  few  times  and  played  with 


once." 


"  No,"  said  the  old  man,  "  it  is  not  strange. 
Every  added  capacity  for  pleasure  is  a  ca- 
pacity for  pain  too.  The  same  sensitiveness 
which  led  you  at  once  to  recognize  the  boy's 
charm  makes  you  now  feel  pain  at  his  death. 
It  is  nothing  that  Etienne  was  a  child  and 
that  you  saw  him  but  a  few  times.  What 
are  our  most  poignant  memories —  a  life- 
long friendship,  a  happy  married  life?  No, 
but  the  intimacy  of  a  two  days'  acquaintance- 
ship under  odd  conditions,  some  little  trick 

[  208  ] 


In  My  Court 

of  manner  in  a  woman  who  was  never  even 
our  mistress,  or  the  glance  of  inspired  com- 
prehension exchanged  with  some  one  un- 
known and  never  seen  again.  But  you  should 
not  grieve.  For  yourself  you  have  added  a 
delicate  memory,  and  for  Etienne  it  is  surely 
better." 

"  No,"  I  cried  rebelliously,  "  it  is  not  bet- 
ter !   Life  is  wonderful  !  " 

"  Ah!  "  observed  the  old  man  sadly,  "you 
are  young." 

"  Etienne  was  younger !  " 

"  There  are  two  great  blessings,"  he  con- 
tinued, "youth  and  death.  Youth  is  good," 
he  said,  his  eyes  brightening  ;  "  I  remember 
my  own,  though  it  is  a  half-century  away 
now ;  but  death,  I  am  sure,  is  better,"  he 
added  wearily. 

Two  days  later,  towards  evening  I  de- 
scended again  to  the  court  and  sat  down  on 
a  bench  in  the  quietest  corner.  After  a  time 
Monsieur  Dupont  entered,  wheeling  the 
bicycle  that  he  sometimes  uses  on  his  trips 

[  209  ] 


T'he  Book  of  Paris 

to  and  from  the  mairie.  He  passed  close  to 
me,  —  for  the  little  shed  under  which  he 
keeps  the  machine  was  not  far  from  my 
seat;  and  I  saw  with  sudden  pity  that  his 
heavy  face  looked  heavier  and  his  little 
eyes  dull  and  red.  When  he  had  put  the 
bicycle  away,  he  came  back  and  stood  look- 
ing about  him  apathetically.  I  raised  my 
hat  when  he  turned  toward  me,  and  he  re- 
plied mechanically,  then,  after  a  moment's 
hesitation,  sat  down  beside  me  and  opened 
his  newspaper  slowly.  But  I  understood  that 
he  was  longing  to  speak  to  some  one,  and  so 
closed  my  book  and  waited.  He  glanced  at 
me  two  or  three  times  to  see  if  I  were  read- 
ing, then  at  last  laid  down  his  paper. 

"  You  have  heard  that  my  son  is  dead  ?  " 
he  said  abruptly,  in  a  tone  that  was  less  a 
question  than  a  challenge  and  almost  hostile 
with  timidity. 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  as  gently  as  possible,  "  I 
know." 

I  paused,  searching  for  something  to  add 

[  210  ] 


In  My  Court 

and  finding  nothing.  That  mattered  little, 
however.  It  was  not  the  expression  of  an- 
other's sympathy  that  he  craved,  but  an 
opportunity  of  speaking  himself,  of  some- 
how escaping  from  the  facts  by  putting 
them  into  words.  And  he  was  not  one  who 
could  talk  to  himself:  he  must  have  a  lis- 
tener. 

"  I  buried  him  the  day  before  yesterday," 
he  went  on  dully,  as  though  repeating  a 
lesson.  "  I  buried  my  son.  I  shall  never  see 
him  again.  — I  don't  understand." 

It  was  pitiful  to  see  this  man,  whom  gen- 
eral ideas  had  always  passed  by,  discovering 
now  for  himself  the  bitter  meaning  of  the 
old,  old  formula.  All  his  life,  doubtless,  he 
had  said  on  occasion,  with  glib  solemnity, 
that  death  was  very  inexplicable  and  sad, 
because  that  was  the  thing  to  say;  now  for 
the  first  time  he  felt  the  significance  of  the 
phrase.  "  I  do  not  understand,"  he  had  said 
helplessly.  The  effort  was  too  great.  He 
fell  back  on  facts. 

[  211  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

"  It  was  scarlet  fever,"  he  continued. 
"He  suffered,  monsieur." 

I  winced.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me 
terrible  for  a  child  to  suffer  —  not  because, 
being  innocent,  he  does  not  deserve  to  (suf- 
fering is  as  horrible  in  the  sinner  as  in  the 
saint)  ;  but  because  he  has  nothing  to  help 
him  through.  He  is  too  young  to  have 
either  a  God  in  whom  he  can  trust  or  one 
whom  he  can  revile;  either  a  sustaining 
confidence  in  a  great  wise  scheme  of  which 
he  is  part  or  the  contemptuous  courage  born 
of  disbelief  in  the  existence  of  any  scheme : 
he  can  only  feel  pain  and  cry  out.  And 
Etienne  had  been  so  delicate  and  sensitive 
a  child  ! 

After  a  moment  the  man  spoke  again. 
"  What  had  he  done  to  suffer  so  ?"  he  cried. 
"  You  saw  him  playing  here.  You  talked 
with  him.  You  know  whether  he  was  good 
or  not,  —  he  was  always  like  that,  mon- 
sieur. What  had  he  done?  Bon  Dieu!  What 
had  he  done  ? '    he  repeated  fiercely. 

[  212  ] 


In  My  Court 

What  indeed!  And  what  reply  could  I 
make  to  this  question  that  has  been  asked 
since  the  beginning  of  the  world  —  and 
never  answered  ? 

"  You  must  not  think  of  that,"  I  said 
hurriedly.  "That  is  all  done  with."  (How 
in  our  impotence  of  mind  we  catch  at 
stock- phrases!)  "There  is  no  suffering 
where    your    son    is    now  —  only    happi- 


ness." 


My  hypocrisy  sickened  me  ;  but  the  fact 
that  I  clung  to  it  nevertheless  brought  me 
a  sudden  flash  of  tolerance  for  the  point  of 
view  of  the  priest.  Time  and  again  I  had 
heard  these  same  platitudes  spoken  from  the 
pulpit  or  at  funerals,  and  had  despised  the 
clergymen  who  uttered  them  for  the  insin- 
cerity in  their  sanctimonious  voices,  for  the 
attitude  of  faith  in  which  faith  was  wanting 
(it  was  not,  doubtless,  that  they  disbelieved 
them,  at  least  not  always ;  only  that  they  did 
not  feel  them  at  the  moment) ;  but  now  I 
understood  that  they  knew  these  formulas  to 

[  213  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

be  healing  and,  irrespective  of  their  truth 
or  untruth,  best  to  be  believed. 

Monsieur  Dupont  looked  at  me  dubious- 
ly. "  Do  you  think,"  he  asked,  "  that  I 
shall  see  my  son  again  ?" 

"  I  am  sure  of  it,"  I  answered  firmly. 

Who  is  there  that  has  the  right  to  speak 
the  truth  if  the  truth  will  only  give  needless 
pain  ?  I  was  glad  I  had  lied  ;  for  the  father's 
heavy  face  softened  and  his  eyes  grew  less 
dull. 

"  You  think  so,  really  ?"  he  asked  again, 
not  because  he  doubted  me,  but  for  the 
comfort  of  hearing  the  assertion  repeated. 

"Yes,"  I  replied  once  more. 

He  sat  silent  for  a  few  minutes,  looking 
away  with  a  half  smile  on  his  lips.  By  tell- 
ing this  man  that  I  thought  one  way  I  had 
somehow  —  temporarily  at  least  —  eased  his 
pain ;  if  I  had  told  him  I  thought  another 
way  I  should  have  made  him  wretched  ;  and 
all  the  time  what  I  thought  or  did  not  think 
mattered  as  little  to  the  truth  itself  as  the 

[  214  ] 


In  My  Court 

brown  leaves  that  were  already  beginning  to 
fall  sparsely  mattered  to  the  wind  that  sent 
them  rustling  downward.  The  irony  of  it 
was  appalling. 

The  light  had  faded.  There  was  no  one 
left  in  the  court  but  us.  Monsieur  Dupont 
turned  to  me  suddenly.  "  I  am  keeping  you. 
See,  it  is  late,"  he  said,  taking  out  his  watch, 
"and  you  have  not  dined." 

We  rose.  He  looked  at  me  in  a  troubled 
silence  for  some  seconds,  groping  dumbly  for 
the  right  words  with  which  to  leave  me.  He 
lived  on  habits ;  it  was  they  that  would  over- 
come his  suffering.  For  each  situation  he 
would  have,  I  thought,  a  fitting  phrase.  But 
the  present  case  was  unique  and  unprepared 
for ;  there  was  no  phrase  that  solved  it. 

"  I  thank  you,"  he  stammered  at  last,  hold- 
ing out  his  hand.  "  You  have  been  very  kind. 
Good-night,  monsieur." 

That  was  a  month  ago.  The  children  have 
forgotten  now,  and  Monsieur  Dupont  has  be- 

[2i5  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

come  again,  so  far  as  one  can  see,  the  placid 
bourgeois  he  was  before.  I  thought  to-day  a 
trifle  bitterly,  when  I  heard  his  boisterous 
laugh,  only  a  little  modulated  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  mourning,  that  Etienne  was 
no  longer  a  memory  for  him,  only  the  mem- 
ory of  a  memory.  But  to  think  so  was  ar- 
rogant and  unfair.  Who  can  tell  in  how 
many  delicate  ways  the  influence  of  his  child 
creeps  through  the  man's  existence  ? 

For  myself  it  is  hard  to  explain  what  is 
left.  I  do  not  think  of  Etienne  often,  —  how 
should  I  in  a  world  which  is  rich  and  exult- 
ant with  vitality  ?  Yet  I  feel  that  somehow, 
where  his  brief  life  touched  mine,  something 
was  added  for  me  to  the  store  of  significant 
experiences  that  one  puts  away  and  that  be- 
come the  background  of  one's  mind. 


<S7.  Etienne  du  Mont 


Pere  Lacbaise 


i    k 


*.'!! 


Jk'iC.-.  '     -  .»*  ?  \ 


t 


VIII 


P&re  Lachaise. — An 
Impression 

N  minds  courageous  enough  to 
embrace  it,  the  thought  of  death 
is  always  a  conscious  presence ; 
but  they,  it  has  been  well  said, 
are  the  noble  minds,  and  I  know  that  I  am 
not  among  them.  I  am  not  more  serious  than 
most  men ;  for,  once  past  the  black  period  of 
impotent  dejection  succeeding  the  day  when 
it  first  flashed  upon  me,  as  it  has  flashed 
upon  so  many  thousand  others,  that  perhaps 
in  all  this  seething,  struggling,  swarming  ex- 
istence, there  was  no  plan,  no  idea,  nothing, 
—  only  hopeless  confusion,  —  I  came  slowly 
to  feel,  with  a  lassitude  to  which  braver  men 
do  not  surrender,  that  the  one  way  to  face 

[  219  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

the  chaos,  and  preserve  a  measure  of  tran- 
quillity, was  to  refuse  to  take  it  seriously  as  a 
whole ;  that  the  kindest  way  of  considering 
life —  since,  it  seemed,  one  must  consider  it 
somehow  —  was  as  a  joke.  And  so  I  laugh  at 
it  all,  —  when  I  can,  —  and  at  myself  more 
than  the  rest  of  it.  It  is  not  hard  to  laugh ; 
for  the  drearier  and  more  pointless  life  ap- 
pears regarded  as  a  play  with  a  beginning,  an 
end,  and  a  moral,  the  more  inimitable  it  be- 
comes as  a  farce.  Only,  beneath  the  amuse- 
ment in  the  observation  of  these  pygmies 
playing  at  being  heroes,  myself  as  hard  as 
any  of  the  others,  I  am  dimly  aware  of  a 
something  else  that  I  do  not  care  to  face. 
Nearly  always  it  lurks  motionless  at  the  bot- 
tom of  my  mind ;  but  on  certain  days  it 
comes,  unbidden,  out  of  its  hiding,  to  settle 
down  like  a  black  shadow  on  everything, 
obliterating  the  farce,  and  leaving  me  con- 
scious only  of  itself,  and  of  what  it  is  —  the 
thought  of  death. 

Yesterday  was  such  a  day.    I  awoke  to  the 

[  220  ] 


Pere  Lachaise 

gray  November  morning  with  a  sense  of  un- 
utterable desolation.  All  that  there  was  of 
buoyant  and  hopeful  in  me  seemed  to  have 
been  extinguished,  and  I  felt  myself  wrapped 
about  with  a  moral  depression  that  was  like 
the  pale  mist  enveloping  the  bare  leafless  elms 
in  the  little  court  on  which  my  bedroom  win- 
dow looks.  Through  the  morning  I  fought 
the  sensation,  struggling  not  to  think,  but  in 
the  afternoon,  exhausted,  I  gave  up,  and  went 
out  into  the  solitude  of  the  crowded  streets. 
At  such  times  there  is  no  reality  in  externals ; 
although  I  can  recall  every  one  of  the  black 
fancies  —  silly  fancies  they  seem  to-day  — 
that  beset  me  as  I  walked,  I  cannot  remem- 
ber how  and  by  what  detours  I  reached  the 
Place  de  la  Bastille.  But  in  that  blank  square, 
about  which  cling  more  recollections  than 
about  any  other  spot  in  Paris,  I  paused ;  and, 
slowly,  before  the  emptiness  of  its  present  and 
the  majestic  memories  of  its  past,  conflicting 
heterogeneous  notions  stole  out  of  my  mind 
and  the  vague  depression  that  weighed  down 

[  221  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

upon  me  resolved  itself  into  the  one  great 
thought.  It  must  always  be  a  terrible  thought 
for  those  who  have  not  faith  that  death  is 
only  a  transition ;  but  there  is  in  the  very 
dramatic  completeness  of  it  a  kind  of  grim 
satisfaction  for  the  iconoclast,  akin  to  that 
one  derives  from  a  tragedy. 

From  the  Place  de  la  Bastille  to  the  cem- 
etery of  Pere  Lachaise  leads  the  rue  de  la 
Roquette,  and  into  it  after  a  few  minutes  I 
turned,  submissively  it  seemed  to  me,  so  pos- 
sessed is  one  at  times  with  the  fatuous  illu- 
sion that  he  is  the  tool  of  some  unknown 
force.  As  I  did  so,  a  long  funeral  procession 
curved  in  from  the  other  side  of  the  square; 
and  while  the  hearse,  with  its  black  swaying 
plumes  and  the  rigid,  expressionless  driver, 
crept  by,  every  man  on  the  crowded  side- 
walks bared  his  head.  There  is  in  Latin 
countries  a  certain  reverence  before  the  pre- 
sence of  death  that  is  nowhere  more  pro- 
found than  in  pagan  France.  In  Spain  and 
Italy,  too,  men  raise  their  hats  at  the  passage 

[  222  ] 


Small  Shops,  Rue  de  Rennes 


Plre  Lacbaise 

of  the  hearse,  but  there  seems  to  me  to  be 
a  deeper  feeling  about  the  act  in  France 
than  elsewhere.  Imagination,  perhaps,  yet 
I  think  not ;  for  the  more  one  learns  to  doubt 
the  conclusions  of  his  reason,  the  more  one 
grows  to  trust  the  truth  of  these  swift,  ephe- 
meral impressions.  Little  forms  are  often  the 
symbols  of  great  ideas;  it  is  so,  whether 
clearly  understood  or  not,  with  this  simple 
ceremonial  in  France ;  for  what  is  so  nobly 
significant  of  the  essential  equality  of  men, 
that  lies  beneath  their  differences,  as  this 
universal  salutation  of  Death,  the  one  com- 
mon master  of  us  all? 

Where  it  leaves  the  Place  de  la  Bastille, 
the  rue  de  la  Roquette  is  a  busy  jostling 
street;  but  little  by  little,  as  it  proceeds  on 
its  way,  its  aspect  changes.  It  should  be 
called  the  rue  du  Cimetiere,  for  surely  no 
other  street  ever  advanced  with  so  unmis- 
takable an  indication  of  its  goal.  Following 
it,  one  grows  conscious  that  the  crowd  is 
first  slowly  thinning,  then  becoming  sparse. 

[  223  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

In  the  long  even  lines  of  architecture  to 
right  and  left  great  gaps  appear,  through 
which  one  gazes  at  the  blank  windowless 
back  walls  of  apartment  houses  surrounding 
the  space  not  built  up ;  and  the  gay  shows  in 
the  little  shop-windows  change  to  displays 
of  uncut  tomb-stones,  artificial  flowers,  and 
mortuary  wreaths.  There  are  no  rattling 
wagons  on  the  cobble-stones;  a  silence  has 
settled  upon  the  street.  So  that  finally,  when 
one  lifts  his  eyes,  and  sees  the  gray  wall  of 
Pere  Lachaise  ahead  of  him,  the  sight  seems 
as  logical  as  the  denoument  of  a  book.  The 
rue  de  la  Roquette  might  be  the  emblem  of 
a  life. 

Entering  the  cemetery  by  the  great  gate, 
I  was  conscious  of  no  change.  The  silence 
here  was  not  profounder  than  that  which 
hung  over  the  street  I  had  just  left.  Only 
there  the  two  sides  of  the  thoroughfare  were 
flanked  each  with  an  interminable  wall  of 
masonry  that  formed  one  vast  dwelling,  stop- 
ping short  now  and  then  at  the  edge  of  a 

[  224  ] 


Pire  Lachaise 

yawning  unused  patch  of  ground,  to  begin 
again,  always  the  same,  at  the  other;  while 
here  the  avenue  was  lined  with  a  multitude 
of  tiny  stone  constructions,  like  shrunken 
houses,  none  more  than  three  or  four  feet 
wide,  and  crowding  close  upon  one  another, 
yet  each  built,  separate  and  complete  by  it- 
self, in  a  pitiful  attempt  to  claim  a  remnant 
of  individuality  for  some  indistinguishable 
bit  of  the  dust  that  fills  the  ground  beneath 
them  all.  The  rue  de  la  Roquette  was  life 
resembling  death;  this  was  death  striving 
for  the  appearance  of  life. 

To  the  left  of  the  avenue,  and  only  a  little 
way  from  the  Porte  Principale,  is  the  grave 
of  de  Musset.  It  is  marked  by  a  stone  on 
which    are    carved    the    lines    from    "Lu- 


•    >> 
cie 


"  Mes  chers  amis,  quand  je  mourrai 
Pl?ntez  un  saule  au  cimetiere. 
J'aime  son  feuillage  eplore, 
La  paleur  m'en  est  douce  et  chere, 
Et  son  ombre  sera  legere 
A  la  terre  ou  je  dormirai"; 

[  225    ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

and  over  it  obediently  droops  a  very  small 
and  sickly  willow.  I  never  enter  Pere  La- 
chaise  without  stopping  to  read  the  verses 
quoted,  nor  without  satisfying  myself  that 
the  willow  is  still  as  unimpressive  as  ever. 
No  one  doubts  the  importance  of  de  Mus- 
set's  rank  in  literature ;  his  prose  is  unsur- 
passed, and  one  must  be  callous  indeed  not 
to  feel  the  lyric  charm  of  his  verse ;  but,  so 
much  granted,  he  remains  only  the  finest 
and  most  delicate  of  sentimentalists.  He  was 
of  the  age  of  Lamartine,  when  poets  rediscov- 
ered how  pleasant  it  was  to  weep  ;  and  in  all 
his  serious  verse  the  note  of  sincerity  is  never 
once  touched.  To  assert  that  "  Les  Nuits  " 
were  born  of  the  unhappiness  de  Musset's 
rupture  with  George  Sand  caused  him,  is  an 
absurditv ;  thev  were  born  of  his  artistic  con- 
ception  of  his  unhappiness.  The  distinction, 
however,  is  too  subtle  not  to  appear  sophis- 
tical. "  Les  Nuits  "  were  de  Musset's  best 
expression  of  his  life,  and  his  life  was  so 
good  a  pose  that  it  convinced  even  himself. 

[  226  ] 


Pere  Lachaise 

After  that,  to  say  that  it  convinced  the  world 
is  an  anti-climax  ;  for  the  world,  on  the  per- 
petual look-out  for  melodrama,  is  only  too 
eager  to  be  deceived ;  its  delight  in  being 
given  what  it  craves  makes  its  critical  judg- 
ment at  the  time  impossible.  We  have  all 
been  corrupted  by  the  artistic  principle.  We 
are  not  much  interested  in  existence  as  it  is, 
—  incoherent,  unbegun,  and  unfinished;  we 
want  it  made  over  into  something  logical 
and  complete  that  we  call  romance.  We  are 
pleased  to  be  told  of  a  life  which  appears  the 
working  out  of  a  theme,  particularly  a  tragic 
one.  Consistent  grief,  ending  in  death,  espe- 
cially appeals  to  us.  But  Nature  has  merci- 
fully ordained  that  a  consistent  grief  shall 
be  impossible.  No  one  can  for  a  great  while 
love  —  except  very  calmly  and  sweetly  —  a 
person  who  is  no  longer  by  his  side.  If  a 
lover  is  to  kill  himself  in  despair  at  his  mis- 
tress's death,  he  must  do  so  immediately  ; 
for  the  despair  will  soon  be  gone.  There  is 
more  forgetting  than  remembering  in  life. 

[  227  1 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

We  will  not,  though,  recognize  the  kind- 
ness of  such  a  law,  except  sometimes  theo- 
retically, as  I  am  recognizing  it  now ;  but 
continue  always  in  our  search  for  romance, 
indifferent  to  the  fact  that  wherever  romance 
is  found  it  exists  either  as  an  accident,  — 
only  a  seeming  agreement  with  our  drama- 
tic principle,  —  or  as  a  pose.  In  de  Musset's 
case  the  pose  was  perfect  and  admirably  sus- 
tained ;  the  laws  of  romance  were  satisfied. 
Hence  his  great  popularity  and  that  of  the 
four  exquisitely  worded  poems  which  best 
represent  him.  They  were  written  nearly  a 
century  ago,  but  their  appeal  is  still  great,  and 
will  be,  as  long  as  the  craving  for  romance 
exists.  To  attempt  to  make  any  point  by 
an  attack  on  their  sincerity  would  be  fruit- 
less; if  lines  from  "Les  Nuits  "  had  been 
carved  on  de  Musset's  tomb,  I  should  never 
have  tried  to  express  the  feeling  it  aroused 
in  me. 

It  is,  however,  from  another  very   dif- 
ferent poem  that  the  verses  used  have  been 

[  228  ] 


Pire  Lachaise 

chosen.  The  mood  of  "  La  Nuit  de  Mai  " 
is  elusive,  wistful,  and  strangely  enchanted, 
but  "  Lucie  "  is  only  a  luxurious  delighted 
riot  of  sadness.  Every  one  knows  the  poem : 
A  boy  and  a  girl,  each  fifteen  years  old,  sit 
dreaming  one  night  at  a  harpsichord  beside 
an  open  window,  through  which  drift  moon- 
light and  the  perfume  of  spring  flowers. 
They  are  silent.  The  boy's  hand  brushes  the 
girl's;  she  starts  from  her  reverie,  touches 
the  keys,  and  sings.  She  stops,  weeping,  rests 
her  head  against  his  shoulder,  and  they  kiss. 
But  she  is  very  sad,  perhaps  with  a  premoni- 
tion of  her  fate ;  for  two  months  later  she  is 
dead. 

It  is  hard  not  to  retain  a  little  affection 
for  "  Lucie,"  especially  if  one  became  ac- 
quainted with  it  very  young ;  but  surely  no 
grown  man  in  his  sober  senses  would  main- 
tain that  this  elegie  is  an  expression  of  sin- 
cere grief.  Grief  hurts  —  to  express  and  to 
be  told  about;  but  whatever  tears  de  Musset 
shed  in  composing  "  Lucie  "  (and  I  do  not 

[  229  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

doubt  that  they  were  many)  must  have  given 
him  untold  pleasure. 

The  poem  begins,  to  state  the  mood,  and 
concludes,  to  emphasize  it,  with  the  six  lines 
now  engraved  on  de  Musset's  tomb.  Let  me 
quote  them  again  :  — 

"  Mes  chers  amis,  quand  je  mourrai, 
Plantez  un  saule  au  cimetiere. 
J'aime  son  feuillage  eplore, 
La  paleur  m'en  est  douce  et  chere, 
Et  son  ombre  sera  legere 
A  la  terre  ou  je  dormirai." 

Rereading  these  lines  yesterday,  in  the  ceme- 
tery of  Pere  Lachaise,  I  thought  suddenly 
and  irreverently  of  a  stanza  in  a  song  that 
some  years  ago  used  to  be  sung  in  America 
among  boys  and  girls  on  pleasure  parties, 
whenever  gayety  was  high.  It  runs  as  fol- 
lows: — 

"  Oh,  dig  my  grave  both  wide  and  deep, 
Place  tomb-stones  at  my  head  and  feet, 
And  on  my  breast  a  turtle-dove, 
To  show  the  world  I  died  of  love." 

Written  down  in  black  and  white,  as  they 
now  are,  these  four  lines  appear  so  much 

[  230  ] 


Pire  Lachaise 

more  atrocious  than  they  ever  sounded  — 
though  heaven  knows  they  sounded  bad 
enough  —  that  I  am  shocked  at  their  having 
seemed  in  any  sense  analogous  to  the  quota- 
tion from  "  Lucie."  And  yet  my  judgment, 
struggling  out  of  the  anguish  caused  by  those 
barbarous  rhymes,  still  insists  that  they  are. 
Although  de  Musset's  lines  are  exquisite 
verse,  the  mere  sound  of  which  is  delicious, 
and  these  the  most  abject  doggerel,  the  sen- 
timent of  both  stanzas  is  the  same,  no  falser 
in  the  one  than  in  the  other.  But  death  is  a 
very  grim  and  tragic  reality,  and  so  for  men 
to  have  accepted  the  pretty  mawkishness  of 
"Lucie"  as  genuine  feeling,  to  have  taken 
de  Musset  at  his  word,  and  to  have  planted 
an  actual  willow  above  his  grave,  is  a  bit  of 
the  grossest  vulgarity,  that  shocks  one  in  the 
same  way  it  would  shock  him  to  hear  a  Tosti 
song  in  a  Gothic  cathedral.  To-day,  when 
the  willow  is  absurdly  puny  and  unimpress- 
ive, it  is  the  puerility  of  the  whole  proceed- 
ing that  most  occupies  one ;  but  before  many 

[  231  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

years  the  tree  will  have  become  large  enough 
to  be  convincing,  and  then  one  will  feel  only 
anger  at  the  sacrilege. 

De  Musset's  grave,  however,  is  the  first 
and  last  in  Pere  Lachaise  before  which  one 
can  experience  anything  even  so  distantly 
akin  to  humor  as  the  irony  roused  by  this 
sentimentality  accepted  as  sentiment ;  for 
across  the  end  of  the  Avenue  Principale  and 
directly  in  one's  path  as  one  advances  rises 
Bartholomews  Monument  to  the  Dead. 

There  is  nothing  comic  about  the  fool 
in  "Lear."  With  his  acrid  reflections  he  is 
a  kind  of  Greek  chorus,  each  of  his  jests  a 
harping  on  the  bitter  theme  that  is  driving 
the  old  king  to  madness.  But  a  time  comes 
when  the  tragedy  has  grown  too  profound  to 
admit  of  even  the  semblance  of  mirth,  and 
the  fool  disappears,  to  be  heard  of  no  more. 
Some  similar  effacement  takes  place  in  the 
mind  of  a  man  sensitive  to  impressions, 
when  he  visits  Pere  Lachaise.  As  one  gazes 
at  the  Monument  to  the  Dead  all  incidental 

[  232  ] 


Pere  Lachaise 

thoughts,  however  relevant,  become  im- 
possible, and  one  is  conscious  only  of  the 
mystery  and  the  grandeur  and  the  terrible 
inevitability  of  death.  The  simplicity  and 
symmetry  of  the  work  are  overwhelming. 
These  two  nude  central  figures  standing  in 
the  door  of  a  tomb,  their  backs  to  us,  the 
woman  with  her  arm  stretched  out,  her  hand 
resting  on  the  man's  shoulder,  state  the 
mood  of  the  whole  conception  as  unmistak- 
ably as  the  first  great  sweeping  chord  states 
the  tonality  of  a  movement  in  a  symphony. 
They  are  looking  inward;  the  sculptor  has 
not  needed  to  reveal  their  faces  to  express 
the  awe  and  the  fear  and  the  wonder  that 
they  feel  at  the  gate  of  the  unknown.  These 
two  stand  in  repose;  but  without,  on  a  nar- 
row ledge  which  traverses  the  tomb  at  about 
a  third  of  its  height,  there  approach  from 
either  side,  in  two  lines  of  splendidly  com- 
posed disorder,  others,  in  postures  of  grief, 
of  despair,  of  abandon,  of  terror,  —  none 
with  hope.  It  may  be  that  the  artist  thought 

[  233  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

of  these  simply  as  mourners,  but  I  prefer  to 
believe  that  he  meant  them  as  those  who 
must  follow  the  first  two  through  the  door ; 
and  so,  in  imagination,  one  sees  the  two  lines, 
continued  here  to  the  edges  of  the  tomb, 
stretching  on  without  end,  inexhaustibly, 
and  composed  not  of  marble  images  but  of 
living  men  and  women,  —  of  thousands,  of 
millions,  of  all  humanity,  each  with  his 
place  in  the  line,  but  none  knowing  surely 
where  it  may  be,  until  he  sees  suddenly  the 
black  door  before  him. 

Below  the  ledge  in  an  embrasure  some- 
what wider  than  the  door  above,  but  not  so 
high,  is  a  group  of  four,  —  a  man  and  a 
woman,  dead,  lying  rigid  side  by  side,  their 
heads  slightly  turned  toward  each  other  and 
the  four  hands  clasped  together,  across  their 
thighs  the  body  of  a  child,  face  down, 
swathed  but  for  a  protruding  foot  and  a  tiny 
relaxed  hand  ;  and  on  a  step  above  the  three 
a  half-kneeling  woman's  figure,  nude  ex- 
cept for  a  veil  that  floats  delicately  behind 

[  234  ] 


Plre  Lachaise 

her  and  falls  softly  over  one  knee.  Her 
arms  are  outstretched,  and  she  gazes  down 
at  the  dead  below.  On  the  wall  beneath  her 
left  arm  are  inscribed  the  words :  "  Sur  ceux 
qui  habit aient  le  pays  de  V  ombre  de  la  mort  une 
lumiere  resplendit" ;  but  I  think  the  sculp- 
tor's purpose  was  artistic  rather  than  sym- 
bolic here.  The  contrast  between  the  almost 
painful  realism  in  the  emaciated  bodies 
of  the  corpses  and  the  idealism  of  the  gra- 
cious exquisitely  poised  creature  above  is 
glorious. 

If  I  have  found  much  meaning  in  this 
monument,  it  is  not  that  I  imagine  its  merit 
to  consist  in  its  intellectual  significance.  Its 
true  greatness  lies,  of  course,  in  its  splendid 
unity  of  composition,  its  dignity  of  design, 
its  beautiful  handling  of  the  nude,  and  in 
the  architectural  simplicity  of  the  whole, 
—  of  which  things,  vital  and  all-important 
as  they  are  in  sculpture,  it  is  difficult  to 
write  and  still  more  difficult  to  read.  Nor 
is  it  that  I  am  accustomed  to  consider  more 

[  235  ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

than  casually  the  symbolism  of  a  work  of 
art.  I  feel,  as  much  as  another,  distrust  for 
the  picture  or  the  statue  that  tells  a  story. 
A  story  is  better  told  in  literature,  where 
sequence  of  time  can  be  expressed.  Paint- 
ing and  sculpture,  higher  forms  of  art,  ap- 
peal to  the  emotions  of  the  man  aesthetically 
cultivated  directly  without  the  intervention 
of  thought.  The  subtle  laws  governing  them 
are  not  the  sterile  forms  the  Philistine  thinks 
them,  but  the  hypnotic  passes  by  which 
somehow  the  artist  is  enabled  to  transfer 
his  mood  to  the  mind  of  another.  They 
were  discovered,  not  invented.  The  render- 
ing in  a  picture  or  a  statue  of  a  thought 
capable  of  any  save  a  very  vague  expression 
in  words  is  a  dangerous  thing,  too  often  but 
a  disguise  for  the  absence  of  a  higher  beauty 
in  the  work.  Obviously,  though,  symbolism 
is  to  some  extent  inevitable.  Complete  de- 
tachment from  the  concrete  is  not  possi- 
ble, —  even  in  music.  Sculptors  may  chisel 
out  of  stone  forms  so  perfect  that  they  seem 

[  236] 


Pire  Lacbaise 

to  us,  standing  before  them,  to  be  expres- 
sions of  abstract  beauty  with  nothing  of  the 
man  or  woman  left  in  them  ;  but  they  are 
none  the  less  interpretations  of  the  human 
body ;  and  painters  do  not  cover  their  can- 
vases simply  with  harmonious  arrangements 
of  colors.  Just  how  far  the  subject  rightly 
enters  into  the  value  of  a  work  of  art,  it  is 
hard  to  determine;  but  perhaps  it  may  be  an 
approximation  of  the  truth  to  say  that  when 
the  thoughts  set  astir  by  the  thing  presented 
reinforce  the  emotions  primarily  aroused  by 
the  manner  of  presentation,  the  subject  has 
served  its  purpose. 

This  rare  adjustment  has  seldom  been 
more  nicely  attained  than  in  Bartholomews 
Monument  to  the  Dead.  At  first  sight  of 
it,  without  as  yet  a  thought  of  what  it  sym- 
bolizes, —  without  any  thought  at  all,  — 
one  apprehends  the  spirit  of  the  work  in  an 
emotion  impossible  of  translation  into  words, 
yet  as  vivid  and  poignant  as  those  of  hate 
or  love.  Afterward,  when  this  has  faded,  as 

[  237  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

it  must  very  soon  fade,  —  moments  of  unal- 
loyed feeling  are  brief,  —  one  becomes 
aware  of  the  symbolism  in  these  massed 
figures  and  this  black  portal  ;  and  by  the 
thoughts  so  set  moving  in  his  mind  one 
conjures  up  the  ghost  of  that  first  sharp 
emotion.  For  they  are  thoughts  about  feel- 
ings, —  about  the  majesty,  the  inevitability, 
the  cruelty,  and  the  beauty  of  death ;  and 
although  the  initial  emotion  was  subtler 
and  stronger  than  any  of  these,  it  had  yet 
something  in  common  with  each.  Symbol- 
ism here  has  served  a  high  purpose.  I  know 
of  no  monument  to  the  dead  nobler  than 
this  of  Bartholomews,  save  the  tombs  of  the 
Medici  in  Florence. 

The  effect  of  the  monument  on  the  be- 
holder, when  he  turns  at  last  from  it,  is  to 
leave  him  with  a  sense  of  only  the  great 
fact  of  death.  The  irony  or  the  dignity, 
the  sadness  or  the  significance,  which,  ac- 
cording to  his  character,  he  is  accustomed 
to  find  in  the  thought  of  it,  he  can,  while 

[  238] 


Pire  Lacbaise 

the  spell  lasts,  no  longer  feel  ;  for  these 
are  aspects  depending  for  existence  on  his 
own  personal  judgment,  and  for  the  time 
being  his  personal  judgment  is  suspended, 
as  something  distinguishing  him  from  other 
men.  Whatever  he  may  individually  have 
thought  about  death  gives  way  temporarily 
before  his  consciousness  of  it  as  a  universal 
fact. 

It  must  have  been  by  the  Avenue  du 
Puits  that  I  left  the  Avenue  Principale  yes- 
terday when  I  had  withdrawn  my  eyes 
from  the  monument ;  for  I  recall  passing  the 
chapel  of  the  Rothschilds  and  not  far  from 
it  the  tomb  of  Abelard  and  Heloise.  I  could 
feel  nothing  incongruous  in  such  a  proxim- 
ity, though  I  remember  I  thought  it  strange 
I  could  not.  Jewish  bankers  of  to-day  and 
priestly  lovers  of  centuries  ago,  —  only  dif- 
ferent stories,  written,  it  may  be,  by  the 
same  writer,  holding  each  a  certain  ephem- 
eral existence  while  one  reads,  none  after- 
wards. The  book  remains  when  the  reader 

[  239  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

has  laid  it  down,  —  words,  —  for  one  story 
as  for  another. 

I  do  not  know  how  long  I  wandered  in 
the  cemetery,  but  I  followed  many  roads 
and  stopped  before  many  graves.  Chopin, 
Larochefoucauld,  Raspail,  Ney,  Daubigny, 
Casimir-Perier,  —  I  said  the  names  over  to 
myself  dully,  but  they  stood  for  nothing 
here.  Familiar  characters  all  of  them  in  the 
vague  unconvincing  novel  we  call  Life; 
strangely  futile,  meaningless,  and  out-of- 
place  in  the  midst  of  this  eternal  reality.  It 
was  as  though  some  one  had  said  to  me: 
"Let  me  present  Hamlet,"  or  "Henry  Es- 
mond." The  names  I  have  enumerated,  and 
others  like  them,  were  carved  on  stones  a 
little  apart  from  the  rest,  but  such  pauses 
were  brief;  inevitably  after  each  would  begin 
again  the  long  line  of  shrunken  houses ;  and 
it  was  in  the  monotonous  uniformity  of  these 
that  I  saw  the  truth  indeed  symbolized.  I 
remember  stopping  once  —  in  what  part  of 
the  cemetery  I  forget — by  the  monument 

[  240  ] 


Pere  Lachaise 

of  a  young  English  lord  dead  a  hundred 
years  ago,  and  being  touched  on  reading  the 
inscription,  with  its  long  list  of  family  titles. 
Pathetic  useless  pomposity !  A  few  feet  of 
turf  on  either  side,  and  the  interminable 
array  of  tiny  mortuary  houses  was  resumed. 
Their  persistence  began  to  appall  me.  "How 
close  those  beneath  must  sleep  !  how  close !  " 
I  thought;  and  I  found  myself  lingering 
in  a  kind  of  relief  before  the  isolated 
tombs.  Reality  is  harder  to  face  than  fic- 
tion. 

In  the  end,  following  the  long  course  of 
the  Avenue  des  Acacias,  with  its  leafless  trees 
that  would  be  so  full  of  blossom  in  the  spring, 
and  taking  the  second  Avenue  Transversale, 
I  left  the  cemetery  by  a  side  gate,  and  stood 
for  a  moment  just  outside,  looking  across 
the  city  from  the  little  adjacent  hill  that  is 
used  as  a  park.  A  long  way  off,  on  the 
heights  of  Montmartre,  the  great  dome  of 
the  Sacre  Cceur  rose,  a  pale  shadow  through 
the  mist.  A  fair  promise  for  the  man  with 

[  241  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

faith  in  a  noble  plan  beneath  all  things,  the 
vision  of  the  white  church  seen  from  the 
cemetery  gates;  but  faith  is  a  rare  gift,  and  to 
me  the  dome  that  hung  so  beautifully  in  the 
air  symbolized  only  a  glorious  myth,  the 
loveliest  of  the  fairy  castles  we  have  built  to 
console  ourselves. 

The  cold  November  twilight  was  falling 
as  I  descended  into  the  city.  The  mist  still 
hung  over  Paris,  but  fainter,  with  a  pale  new 
moon  struggling  through  it.  The  boule- 
vards were  brilliant  with  lights,  and  filled 
with  a  throng  that  ebbed  and  flowed  slowly 
along  the  sidewalks  and  curved  here  and 
there  in  black  spirals  through  the  press  of 
carriages  in  the  streets.  Whips  cracked  im- 
patiently, horses'  hoofs  beat  rhythmically  on 
the  pavement,  and  the  vendors  of  evening 
papers  cried  their  journals  harshly;  but,  as 
I  looked  down  from  the  imperiale  of  my  om- 
nibus, it  seemed  to  me  that  in  this  noisy 
confusion  there  was  only  the  semblance 
of  substantiality;  reality  was  in  the  silence 

[  242  ] 


On  Boulevard  Montparnasse 


(•VfnW 


Pire  Lacbaise 

of  the  secluded  place  I  had  left.  And  the 
figures  swarming  here  in  the  thoroughfare 
beneath  me  were  less  crowded  than  those 
motionless  ones  which  lay  beneath  the 
ground  of  Pere  Lachaise. 

What  should  it  have  mattered  to  me  how 
close  the  dead  slept?  It  mattered  little  to 
them.  Why  should  that  thought  have  re- 
mained the  most  vivid  among  those  of  the 
day?  Yet  all  through  the  evening,  as  I  sat 
before  my  fire,  it  haunted  me,  when  the  rest 
had  grown  dull.  The  mist  was  quite  gone 
now;  from  my  window  I  could  see  the 
moonlight  rippling  along  the  river,  and  I  fell 
to  imagining  with  what  strange  tracery, 
creeping  through  the  bare  boughs  of  the 
oaks  and  the  acacias,  it  must  cover  the  white 
tombs  and  the  long  rows  of  mortuary  cha- 
pels in  the  cemetery,  now  that  the  great 
gates  were  closed,  and  there  was  no  foot-fall 
to  disturb  the  crowded  silence.  The  vision 
was  so  vivid  that  I  tried  at  last  to  put  it  into 
words,  choosing  verse,  that  I  might  make 

[  243  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

of  the  first  fancy  the  refrain  it  had  become 
in  my  own  mind. 

How  close  the  dead  sleep  in  this  silent  place ! 

Piercing  the  gloom 

Of  guardian  oaks,  the  moonbeams  drift  and  trace 

Strange  shifting  characters  across  the  face 

Of  tomb  on  tomb 

Innumerable;  beneath  there  is  no  space 

Unfilled,  so  close  the  dead  sleep  in  this  place! 

Above  them  bloom 

Pale  flowers.    Why  should  we  grant  them  other  grace  ? 

Friends,  aliens,  foes,  —  they  are  now  but  one  race, 

Who  need  no  room. 

How  close  the  dead  sleep  in  this  silent  place! 


On  the  Boulevard 


An  Interview 


s 


IX 

An  Interview 


T  was  a  November  evening. 
Outside,  the  rain  was  sweeping 
ftsr  in  gusts  against  the  windows ; 
Syiiyiii^S  but  indoors,  with  the  curtains 
drawn  and  a  fire  burning  on  the  hearth,  my 
little  sitting-room  was  warm  and  cheerful. 
I  had  spread  my  papers  out  on  the  table 
before  the  lamp  and  put  a  new  pen  in  the 
holder  ;  but  as  I  rose  to  light  what  I  swore 
should  be  my  last  cigarette  before  going  to 
work,  one  of  the  tiny  logs  in  the  fireplace 
collapsed  with  a  shower  of  sparks.  A  sud- 
den blaze  followed,  that  illumined  the  whole 
room  and  shone  especially  on  the  green,  gold- 
lettered  back  of  a  volume  in  one  of  the 
shelves  opposite.  I  stepped  across  and  took 
it  down.    It  was  "  Le  Mannequin  d'Osier ' 

[  247  1 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

of  Anatole  France,  the  book  that  I  love  the 
best  in  contemporary  literature.  I  carried  it 
over  to  my  place  by  the  fire,  and  opened 
it,  with  that  sweet  sense  of  doing  something 
a  little  wrong,  to  a  favorite  passage,  intending 
to  read  only  a  few  lines.  But  once  under  the 
spell  of  its  incisive  gem-like  French,  and 
the  searching  irony  of  its  philosophy,  I  could 
not  lay  the  book  aside,  but  read  on  and  on, 
turning  the  leaves  in  spite  of  myself,  resolv- 
ing as  I  began  each  new  chapter  that  when 
it  was  finished  I  would  stop,  and  each  time 
breaking  the  resolution,  until  finally  I  reached 
the  last  word  of  the  last  page,  and  closed  the 
covers  with  a  sigh.  Then  I  glanced  at  my 
watch ;  it  was  one  o'clock.  Too  late  to  do 
any  work  now,  and  there  was  no  good  in 
regretting ;  so  I  put  my  papers  away,  and 
sitting  back  with  "Le  Mannequin  d'Osier" 
still  in  my  hand,  fell  to  reflecting  on  it,  and 
wondering  about  its  author. 

It  is  strange  how  few  among  the  great 
men  of  the  past  one  wishes  he  might  have 

[  248  ] 


Little  Balconies 


r 


x  Hr  &&w 


An  Interview 

known  personally.  I  should  like  to  have  met 
Shakespeare  and  Mozart  and  Moliere,  it  is 
true,  and  I  would  give  all  I  possess  to  have 
been  the  humblest  of  Shelley's  friends.  But, 
as  for  most  of  the  others,  I  am  content  with 
what  they  have  left  me  of  themselves.  To- 
ward authors  of  our  own  day,  however,  our 
feelings  are  necessarily  different.  We  are  in 
sympathy  with  their  point  of  view.  Their 
ideas  are  ours,  only  completer,  more  logically 
developed  and  better  expressed.  Their  faults 
especially,  which  we  possess  in  a  greater  de- 
gree, endear  them  to  us.  Thus  it  frequently 
happens  that  in  reading  a  contemporary  au- 
thor we  feel  him  to  represent  what  is  best 
and  most  worth-while  in  us ;  we  are  con- 
scious of  a  desire,  that  is  almost  introspec- 
tive, to  meet  this  higher  self  face  to  face. 
So  it  was  with  me,  as  I  sat  looking  into  the 
fire,  and  fingering  abstractedly  the  familiar 
pages  of  the  book  I  had  j  ust  re-read.  I  ran  over 
in  my  mind  all  the  scattering  information  I 
had  been  able  to  gather  concerning  Anatole 

[  249  ] 


The  Book  of  Pans 

France  —  or  Monsieur  Thibaut,  if  you  pre- 
fer his  real  name.  He  lived,  some  one  had 
said,  in  a  very  small  and  closed  society,  and 
when  he  entered  a  salon  every  one  was  sud- 
denly silent  as  at  the  entrance  of  a  king. 
What  means  were  there  for  an  obscure  for- 
eigner to  meet  this  genius,  acquaintance  with 
whom  had  become  so  rare  and  precious  a 
thing  for  his  own  countrymen  ?  I  might 
write  to  him,  but  my  letter  would  be  only 
one  of  perhaps  fifty.  It  had  doubtless  been 
many  years  since  he  had  been  able  to  feel 
anything  but  weariness  in  glancing  over  these 
monotonous  outbursts  of  anonymous  praise. 
Perhaps  he  no  longer  read  them,  but  em- 
ployed a  secretary  just  to  throw  them  into 
the  fire.  Nevertheless  the  idea  tempted  me. 
There  could  be  no  harm  in  writing,  and  I 
did  not  need  to  send  the  letter.  I  drew  up 
close  to  the  table  and  began. 

It  proved  a  difficult  undertaking.  All  the 
thoughts  awakened  by  the  abbe  Guitrel,  the 
prefet  Worms-Clavelin  and  the  observations 

[  250  ] 


An  Interview 

of  Monsieur  Bergeret, — thoughts  that  touch 
on  nearly  every  subject  under  the  sun,  as 
you  will  know  if  you  have  read  the  book, 
—  clamored  to  be  expressed,  and  to  go 
trailing  page-long  parentheses  behind  them. 
But  this  would  not  do.  The  language  of  a 
letter  fit  for  the  greatest  modern  master 
of  French  to  read  must  be  concise  and 
straightforward.  I  ended  by  suppressing  the 
thoughts.  When  I  had  finished  and  was 
considering  the  scanty  result,  I  reflected 
that  to  have  spent  the  evening  in  work 
would  have  been  less  laborious.  But  here 
is  what  I  had  written  : 

Monsieur  :  —  It  is  only  because,  having  just  re-read 
"Le  Mannequin  d'Osier  "  for  the  fourth  time,  I  feel  it 
would  be  ungrateful  not  to  try  to  express  something  of 
the  humble  admiration  I  have  for  the  creator  of  Mon- 
sieur Bergeret,  that  I  venture  to  write  to  you.  When  I 
read  "Le  Livre  de  Mon  Ami"  and  "Le  Crime  de  Syl- 
vestre  Bonnard"  I  had  self-restraint  enough  to  repress 
the  impulse  I  felt  to  tell  you  of  the  delicate  pleasure  they 
gave  me;  but  with  your  "  Histoire  Contemporaine"  it 
is  different.   Those  four  volumes  have  done  more  than 

[  25i   ] 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

afford  me  keen  enjoyment :  they  have  made  me  think 
thoughts  I  should  never  have  discovered  by  myself.  Their 
point  of  view  has  helped  to  form  my  own.  For  the  sec- 
ond one  of  the  series  I  have  a  greater  admiration  than 
for  any  other  prose  work  of  the  last  twenty  years.  It 
would  be  useless  to  write  you  what  I  think  of  the  book ; 
if  this  were  an  intellectual  letter  it  would  be  imperti- 
nent. Only  permit  me  to  say,  monsieur,  that  we  trans- 
atlantiques  as  well  as  your  own  countrymen  appreciate 
the  wholesome  irony,  the  profound  philosophy,  the  in- 
terest in  humanity  as  it  is,  and  the  perfect  art,  of  "  Le 
Mannequin  d'Osier." 

It  would  have  shown,  I  know,  a  truer  gratitude  on 
my  part  to  have  spared  you  this  expression  of  enthusi- 
asm, but  I  could  not  help  myself.  Before  a  splendid 
spectacle  in  nature  one  invariably  utters  a  cry.  The 
spectacle  is  not  improved  or  in  anywise  changed,  but  the 
cry  is  irrepressible  ;  it  is  uttered  for  oneself.  Thus  this 
letter  is  written  really  for  myself.  If  you  should  take  it 
in  any  other  way,  I  should  fear  that  you  thought  me  a 
seeker  of  autographs. 

Croyez,  monsieur,  etc. 

Here  followed  my  name  (written  very  legi- 
bly) ;  I  did  not  add  the  address  (it  was  printed 
on  the  paper). 

I  laid  the  pen  on  the  table,  and  pushed 

[  252  ] 


In  the  Quartier  du  Pantheon 


An  Interview 

back  my  chair,  then  leaned  over  to  throw 
more  wood  on  the  embers  that  were  grow- 
ing gray.  In  the  morning  I  would  send  the 
letter. 

Time  passes  as  though  one  were  only 
looking  into  the  fire  ;  events  are  scarcely 
more  real  than  dreams.  Could  it  be  that 
the  month  had  changed  to  December  and 
the  rain  to  snow,  when  one  morning  Euge- 
nie brought  me,  together  with  two  wed- 
ding announcements  from  America  (for  five 
years  my  friends  seem  to  have  had  nothing 
to  do  but  marry),  an  envelope  addressed 
in  an  unfamiliar  hand  and  stamped  with 
the  Paris  postmark  ?  I  shall  never  feel  any- 
thing sweeter  nor  more  improbably  perfect 
than  my  joy  at  the  contents.  They  were 
simple,  only  a  few  lines  on  a  sheet  of  thin 
paper: — 

Villa  Said,  December  tenth. 

Monsieur  :  —  Permit  me  to  thank  you  for  your  flat- 
tering letter,  and  to  express  the  hope  that  if  you  have 
no  other  engagement  for  Wednesday  the  fifteenth  of 

[  253  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

December,  you  will  be  kind  enough  to  call  on  me  that 
afternoon  between  four  and  five  o'clock. 

Be  assured,  monsieur,  that    I   do    not   think   you   a 
"seeker  of  autographs,"  et  croyez  etc. 

Anatole  Thibaut  (Anatole  France). 

If  I  had  no  other  engagement !  I  would 
have  canceled  anything,  —  even  an  appoint- 
ment to  take  tea  with  Madame  Steinheil ! 

Looked  back  upon,  one's  life  is  a  series 
of  disconnected  scenes  —  islands  floating  in 
a  sea  of  forgetfulness.  There  is  nothing 
to  prove  to  me  that  the  days  between  that 
on  which  I  received  the  letter  and  the 
Wednesday  following  existed;  if  they  did, 
they  must  have  been  a  period  of  impatient 
dullness.  But  the  afternoon  of  the  rendez- 
vous is  as  distinct  as  yesterday  in  my  mem- 
ory, beginning  with  the  moment  when  the 
servant  led  me  from  the  door  of  the  house 
through  a  half-seen  hallway  to  another  door, 
the  heavy  hangings  of  which  he  held  aside 
while  I  crossed  the  threshold,  then  let  fall 
behind  me.  As  I  entered  the  room  beyond, 

[  254  ] 


An  Interview 

which  I  rather  felt  than  saw  to  be  a  study,  a 
man  rose  from  an  arm-chair  beside  an  Empire 
table,  and  advanced  to  meet  me.  I  was  face 
to  face  with  Anatole  France. 

My  first  impression,  if  I  am  to  be  honest, 
was  not  that  he  had  wonderful  eyes,  nor  yet 
that  he  was  below  medium  height  and  was 
rather  stout  (though  it  might  have  been  any 
of  these),  but  a  banal  surprise  that  he  should 
so  strikingly  resemble  the  portrait  of  him 
that  I  had  seen  at  the  Salon  the  preceding 
summer.  It  was  less  as  though  his  likeness 
to  it  were  remarkable  (this,  I  suppose  because 
I  had  seen  the  picture  first,  was  the  perverse 
way  I  found  myself  putting  the  thought), 
than  as  though  he  actually  were  the  portrait. 

"  You  are  very  welcome,  monsieur,"  he 
said,  in  a  French  so  exquisitely  enunciated 
that  the  rasping  quality  of  the  voice  itself 
was  at  once  forgotten.  "  Pray  be  seated.  Will 
you  smoke  ? "  Then,  when  he  had  lighted  the 
cigarette  he  had  proffered  me  and  his  own, 
he  sank  into  a  chair  opposite  mine  and  rested 

[  255  1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

his  chin  in  his  hand.  "  You  are  even  younger 
than  I  thought,"  he  observed  at  last  without 
appearing  to  look  at  me. 

"You  knew  I  was  young?" 

"  Yes,"  he  remarked,  but  in  the  tone 
in  which  he  might  have  admitted  that  this 
was  a  large  city,  or  that  we  had  been  hav- 
ing cold  weather.  "You  imagined  that  I 
had  come  to  find  letters  of  appreciation  tire- 


some." 


"  You  have  not  ? " 

"No,"  said  Anatole  France,  "I  still  read 
them.  Authors  always  do.  I  no  longer  get 
any  pleasure  from  them,  except"  —  cour- 
teously—  "such  as  yours;  but  were  they  to 
cease  suddenly,  I  should  feel  discontented  and 
abused." 

One  end  of  his  upper  lip  curled  down  into 
a  cynical  little  wrinkle.  He  was  like  his  own 
Monsieur  Bergeret  now,  —  and  yet  not  like 
him  either,  less  human  somehow.  I  knew 
Monsieur  Bergeret  personally ;  I  felt  that  I 
should  never  know  his  creator.   I  could  not 

[  256] 


An  Interview 

rid  myself  of  the  idea  that  he  was  just  the 
portrait  I  had  seen  in  the  Salon. 

"  At  all  epochs,"  he  continued,  "  the  mind 
has  been  popularly  considered  as  subject  to 
none,  or  to  strange  and  incomprehensible 
laws,  essentially  different  from  those  simple 
ones  that  govern  the  body.  The  murmurs 
of  philosophy  whose  persistent  tendency  has 
been  to  prove  the  contrary,  have  never 
reached  the  ear  of  the  masses ;  and  indeed, 
had  they  done  so,  it  is  matter  of  doubt 
whether  the  masses  would  willingly  have 
listened,  for  these  popular  misconceptions 
are  obstinate  and  tenacious ;  it  is  through 
them  that  superstition  and  the  belief  in  the 
miraculous  maintain  themselves.  Philoso- 
phers welcome  each  reduction  of  complexity 
to  simplicity  as  a  new  step  toward  the  ulti- 
mate comprehension  of  the  universe,  which 
is  their  dream  ;  but  the  masses,  cherishing 
the  belief  that  certain  things  cannot  be  un- 
derstood, look  upon  each  such  reduction  with 
disapproval.    Columbus  was  derided,  and  it 

[  257  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

is  given  to  few  to  be  as  unpopular  as  Gali- 
leo." 

I  nodded  approval.  An  immense  pride 
was  swelling  in  my  heart.  For  I  too  had 
thought  this  out.  The  master  whom  I  re- 
vered was  expressing  ideas  I  myself  had  had. 
A  desire  to  cry  as  much  into  his  ear  and 
force  his  admiration  wrung  me;  but  I  sup- 
pressed it,  to  listen  again. 

"  The  public,  it  is  true,  have,"  he  went 
on,  "some  justification  for  the  skepticism 
with  which  they  have  always  treated  the 
conclusions  of  philosophers;  but  I  have  only 
to  turn  my  eyes  inward  to  be  increasingly 
convinced  that  here  at  least  philosophy  is  in 
the  right.  The  attributes  of  my  mind — will, 
attention,  and  the  rest — are,  I  observe  with 
an  instinctive  displeasure,  subject  to  the  same 
laws  that  rule  my  body.  The  athlete  expe- 
riences pleasure  from  his  over-developed  sin- 
ews during  the  brief  time  that  he  retains  the 
memory  of  his  former  inferiority ;  afterwards, 
comparison  becoming  impossible  once  the 

[  258] 


An  Interview 

recollection  of  what  he  was  has  faded,  he  is 
conscious  of  no  superiority.  Nevertheless  he 
has  become  the  slave  of  his  own  strength. 
The  muscles  which  he  has  trained  into  ab- 
normal power  must  be  ministered  to,  or  a 
degeneration  of  his  whole  body  will  set  in. 
Thus  it  is  with  the  minds  of  authors.  Their 
vanity  has  grown  with  pampering,  like  the 
liver  of  a  Swiss  goose.  Flattery,  which  at 
first  afforded  them  enjoyment,  has  become 
a  necessity." 

He  paused,  with  a  bitter  smile. 

"  For  pleasurable  companionship,"  he 
added,  "  seek  out  men  of  affairs.  Avoid  au- 
thors and  artists." 

"  And  musicians,"  I  suggested. 

"  And  musicians,"  said  Anatole  France 
fervently. 

There  was  a  little  pause.  I  was  unhappy; 
for  my  exultation  that  Anatole  France  had 
expressed  my  own  thought  was  less  than  my 
dissatisfaction  that  he  did  not  know  it. 

"  There  were  so  many  things  I  wanted  to 

[  259  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

speak  to  you  of,"  I  faltered  at  last  helplessly, 
"  and  now  they  are  all  gone.  Do  you  re- 
member Heine's  account  of  his  meeting 
with  Goethe  ?  He  had  thought  for  years  of 
the  things  he  would  discuss  with  the  great 
man,  but  when  he  finally  met  him  he  found 
nothing  to  say  except  that  the  plums  were 
ripe  along  the  road  he  had  followed." 

"  But  I  am  very  far  from  being  Goethe," 
said  Anatole  France. 

"  Not  so  far  as  I  from  being  Heine,"  I 
added  hastily. 

The  author  of  "  Thais "  smiled  again. 
"The  compliment  is  neat,"  he  observed. 

I  thanked  him  deprecatingly,  but  I  felt 
secretly  that  he  was  right. 

"  You  are  the  first  American,"  he  re- 
marked, "  to  —  you  are  American  ?  "  (I 
nodded)  —  "  the  first  to  write  me  concern- 
ing Monsieur  Bergeret.  I  had  fancied  him 
unknown  in  your  country." 

"  In  America,"  I  replied,  "  every  one  who 
reads    French   knows  '  Le  Livre  de  Mon 

[  260  ] 


An  Interview 

Ami,'  and  every  one  who  reads  anything 
besides  the  magazines  and  the  current  fic- 
tion is  familiar  with  *  The  Crime  of  Syl- 
vestre  Bonnard  ' ;  but  those  who  delight  in 
*  Le  Mannequin  d'Osier,'  emancipated  as 
they  are  from  social  caste  (for  such  an  eman- 
cipation is  one  of  the  essentials  to  understand- 
ing Monsieur  Bergeret),  belong,  I  think,  all 
the  more,  if  unknowingly,  to  an  intellectual 
caste,  one  of  the  rules  of  which  is  that  ac- 
quaintance with  an  author's  books  does  not 
give  one  the  right  to  infringe  on  his  per- 
sonal life.  I  have  broken  the  rule.  I  am 
unworthy  of  my  class." 

"  It  was  a  foolish  rule,"  said  Anatole 
France. 

His  eyes  sparkled,  and  I  laughed.  I  was 
reminded  of  a  fencing  exhibition  I  had  wit- 
nessed once  at  the  exercises  of  a  girls' school. 
There  had  been  no  lunging,  but  much  salut- 
ing and  courteous  crossing  of  foils. 

"  You  said  in  your  letter,"  he  remarked 
simply,  "  that  you   admired  my  '  Histoire 

[  261  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

Contemporaine,'  but  you  did  not  say  why.  I 
should  like  to  know  now  —  if  you  will  tell 
me." 

I  was  flattered.  It  could  be  only  interest 
in  me  that  prompted  his  question,  for  he 
knew  already  a  thousand  times  better  than 
I  why  the  books  were  masterpieces.  He 
could  learn  nothing  new  about  them  from 
my  reply,  but  he  would  learn  what  manner 
of  person  I  was.  My  responsibility  to  my- 
self was  oppressive. 

"  There  are  so  many  reasons,"  I  stam- 
mered.  "  I  do  not  know  where  to  begin." 

"  Beginnings  are  hard  and  invariably 
wrong,"  he  observed  thoughtfully,  "  so  it 
does  not  matter ;  begin  anywhere." 

"  I  think  most  of  all  it  is  for  their  point 
of  view,"  I  said,  "that  I  like  the  books, — 
the  scrutinizing  irony  with  which  in  them 
you  look  out  on  life,  generalizing  freely  and 
acutely,  but  honestly  and  carefully,  never 
unworthily  from  the  mere  masculine  love  of 
generalization,  and  finding  the  most  where 

[  262  ] 


Passage  des  Patriarches  —  Rue  Mouffetard 


.    i 


S     -i:Vfe*£ 


An  Interview 

it  seems  to  me  the  most  is  always  to  be  found, 
—  in  the  little  things.  It  was,  unless  I  mis- 
take, from  the  tearful  brutish  protest  of  the 
servant  Euphemie  that  Monsieur  Bergeret 
drew  the  profoundest  reflection  in  '  Le  Man- 
nequin d'Osier,'  — that  concerning  the  fail- 
ure in  the  feminine  mind  to  distinguish 
between  the  creative  and  the  destructive 
forces." 

"  Yes,"  he  assented. 

"  People  have  reproached  you  for  treating 
too  much  the  petty  \mesquin\  side  of  things, 
but  that  is  because,  accustomed  to  the  hero- 
ics of  most  works  of  fiction,  they  forget  that 
it  is  almost  entirely  of  what  is  mesquin  that 
life  is  composed.  There  are  heroics  —  and 
heroism  too  —  in  your  books  ;  who  will  say 
that  there  were  not  both  in  the  conduct  of 
poor  Madame  de  Bonmont  ?  but,  as  nearly 
always  in  life,  they  were  at  the  same  time 
absurd; "and  this  too  was  unpleasant  to  those 
readers." 

"You  are  a  warm  adherent,"  said  Ana- 

[  263  1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

tole  France  with  a  smile.  I  flushed.  "  But 
what  you  say  is  discerning,"  he  added  kindly. 
"  My  '  Histoire  Contemporaine'  will  never 
be  genuinely  liked  by  the  mass  of  readers, 
not  even  by  the  mass  of  intelligent  readers ; 
they  have  been  fed  too  long  on  sweets,  — 
though  less  here,  I  believe,"  he  continued, 
"than  in  England  or  America." 

"  Oh  !  "  I  exclaimed  sadly,  "  in  England 
and  America  it  is  considered  praise  to  say 
of  a  book  that  it  may  without  danger  be 
placed  in  the  hands  of  a  sixteen-year-old 
girl.  The  effect  on  our  prose  has  been  ap- 
palling. That  some  books  should  be  writ- 
ten for  girls  of  sixteen  is  well  enough  ;  that 
all  books  should  be  is  distressing.  The  result 
has  been  to  bar  our  prose-writers  from  the 
frank  consideration  of  much  that  is  vitally 
important  in  life,  and  to  force  them  often 
into  hypocrisy." 

"Yet  you  have  had  books  which  were 
not  afraid  to  discuss  things  as  they  are." 

"  In  the    eighteenth    century,  yes ;    few 

[  264] 


An  Interview 

since.  Our  poetry,  thank  God,  has  always 
been  freer." 

"  Your  poetry  is  inimitable ;  and  your  prose 
may  yet  be  emancipated.  Victorianism,  Eng- 
lishmen tell  me,  is  dying." 

"There  was  something  else,"  I  remarked 
a  little  timidly  after  a  pause,  "  that  I  wanted 
to  say  of  the  '  Histoire  Contemporaine.'  It 
will  perhaps  weary  you,  but  I  should  feel  an 
ingrate  if  I  should  go  away  without  having 
said  it." 

"  I  should  be  sorry  not  to  hear  it,"  he 
returned.  "  What  you  have  already  said  has 
interested  me." 

"  It  was,"  I  continued,  "  that  in  the  form 
of  those  books  you  have  gone  one  step  be- 
yond the  novel." 

It  seemed  to  me  that  for  the  first  time  I 
had  really  interested  Anatole  France.  He 
looked  at  me  keenly. 

"  The  novel  is  a  splendid  form,  —  the 
best  we  have  had,"  I  went  on,  "and  much 
has  certainly  been  done  through  it ;  but  even 

r  265 1 


The  Book  of  Paris 

the  novel  truckles  to  romance.  It  has  too 
sharp  a  beginning,  too  definite  an  ending; 
it  is  too  much  a  whole  to  be  capable  of  en- 
tire usefulness.  In  it  the  characters  created 
fit  together  too  nicely,  so  that  in  looking 
back  from  the  end  to  the  beginning  one  is 
aware  of  a  rigid  unity,  a  careful  plan.  To 
achieve  such  a  work  of  art,  to  eliminate 
everything  that  has  no  bearing  on  the  theme, 
to  create  only  characters  that  serve  in  its  de- 
velopment, must  demand  great  talent ;  but, 
noble  as  the  result  is,  it  seems  to  me  cramped 
by  its  own  perfection.  Life  is  not  like  that.  It 
has  both  purpose  andpurposelessness.  Things 
do  not  dovetail  so  accurately.  Everywhere 
there  are  ragged  ends  hanging  loose.  In  the 
four  books  of  the  'Histoire  Contemporaine' 
you  let  them  hang.  The  characters  you  cre- 
ated have  some  influence  on  one  another, 
but  no  more  than  they  would  have  had  if 
they  had  actually  existed,  and  never  for  the 
furtherance  of  an  artistic  scheme.  At  times 
their  lives  touched,  at  times  ran  separately. 

[  266  ] 


An  Interview 

And  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  in  standing  aside 
as  you  did,  in  watching  it  all  as  an  observer, 
in  giving  never  your  own  view  of  life,  but 
the  view  held  by  each  of  your  characters, 
you  achieved  a  wider  and  truer  unity  than 
was  ever  reached  in  a  novel." 

I  paused  apprehensively,  abashed  at  my 
presumptuousness.  But  the  author's  look  was 
kindly. 

"  Your  appreciation,"  said  Anatole  France, 
"  is  very  grateful  to  me.  That  was  indeed 
what  I  attempted  to  do." 

Then  we  talked  on  —  mostly  it  was  I  who 
talked —  of  Monsieur  Bergeret,  of  Madame 
de  Gromance,  of  the  abbe  Lantaigne  and 
the  abbe  —  later  the  bishop  —  Guitrel,  of 
the  prefet  Worms-Clavelin  and  his  amazing 
wife,  and  of  the  dog  Riquet. 

"  The  dog  Riquet,"  observed  Anatole 
France,  "  has  the  character  accorded  by  all 
novelists  who  are  liked  to  their  heroes.  In 
his  attitude  toward  life  there  are  unselfish- 
ness, humility  and  idealism.   These  qualities 

[  267  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

are  in  fact  to  be  found  only  in  dogs.  That 
is  why  novels,  as  you  have  so  justly  observed, 
are  untrustworthy." 

I  rose  to  go.  "  It  would  be  useless  to  at- 
tempt to  tell  you,  monsieur,  with  what  grati- 
tude and  pleasure  I  shall  remember  this  hour 
you  have  granted  me,"  I  said;  and  he  must 
have  recognized  my  sincerity ;  for  his  smile 
was  kindly.  "  It  is  such  courtesy  as  that  you 
have  shown  me  which  makes  me  love  Paris," 
I  went  on.  (There  were  vague  thoughts 
struggling  to  take  shape  at  the  bottom  of 
my  mind.  I  must  express  them ;  for  I  felt 
them  to  be  worth  while.)  "  Friends,  I  think, 
are  for  the  big  things  of  life "  (I  know  I 
spoke  confusedly),  "  to  depend  on  or  to  help 
in  the  great  emergencies ;  and  the  two  or 
three  friends  one  needs  one  can  perhaps  most 
readily  find  among  his  own  people.  But 
while  the  big  things  arrive  only  very  rarely, 
the  little  things  are  with  us  every  day ; 
our  very  social  existence  is  constructed  of 
them.  For  them  one  has  acquaintances ;  and 

[  268  ] 


An  Interview 

acquaintances  are  more  readily  made  here,  I 
believe,  than  anywhere  else  under  the  sun. 
Friendship,  after  all,  is  somewhat  barbarous, 
requiring  on  both  sides  a  total  loyalty  which 
is  unnatural,  given  the  mutual  knowledge  of 
faults  that  must  exist  in  so  close  an  intimacy; 
acquaintanceship  is  less  exacting  and  more 
civilized,  binding  one  to  nothing,  and  ask- 
ing only  that  faults  be  kept  discreetly  out  of 
sight  for  the  time  being.  You  knew,  mon- 
sieur, that  you  would  see  me  only  for  an 
hour  and  then  perhaps  never  again,  and  yet 
there  has  been  no  hint  of  that  in  your  kind- 
ness to  me.  You  have  talked  with  me  as 
pleasantly  as  though  we  had  dined  together 
yesterday  and  were  to  drive  in  the  Bois  to- 
morrow. Paris  is  the  only  civilized  country 
in  the  world.   That  is  why  I  love  it." 

"Thankyou,"said  Anatole France.  "That 
is  a  very  pretty  speech." 

"  It  was  a  very  long  one,"  I  replied. 

"  You  live  in  Paris  always?  "  he  inquired, 
touching  the  bell. 

[  269  ] 


'The  Book  of  Paris 

"  Yes." 

"  One  has  to  be  a  little  foreign  to  be  a 
Parisian,"  he  went  on  musingly.  "Those 
Frenchmen  who  are  not  so  already,  hasten 
to  marry  an  American  or  adopt  an  English 
accent.   But  you  will  go  back." 

"To  my  own  people?" 

"Yes." 

"  I  am  sorry  you  say  that,"  I  remarked, 
"for  I  have  secretly  known  it  all  along." 

"Why  be  sorry?"  he  asked.  "Is  it  so 
dreadful  —  America  ? " 

"  No,"  I  answered  quickly,  "  it  is  not 
dreadful.  It  is  vulgar;  but  its  vulgarity  is 
only  a  sign  of  its  exuberant  vitality." 

Anatole  France  nodded.  "  Vulgarity  is  to 
be  found  in  whatever  is  great  and  young  and 
splendid.  Beethoven  was  vulgar,  and  Shake- 
speare and  Michel  Angelo." 

"  No,  truly  it  is  not  dreadful,"  I  repeated 
remorsefully. 

He  smiled.  "  No  one  is  so  detached  as  he 
thinks  himself,"  he  said.  "  One  destroys  pre- 

[  270  ] 


An  Interview 

judice  after  prejudice  and  conviction  after 
conviction,  as  a  man  in  a  balloon  cuts  the 
cords  that  connect  him  with  the  ground  and 
prevent  his  rising  to  a  point  whence  he  can 
look  down  on  all  things  with  a  just  and  com- 
paring gaze,  yet  there  are  always  a  thousand 
delicate  fibres  that  hold  him  back  from  per- 
fect freedom.  You  are  cutting,  cutting,  but 
you  are  not  completely  detached,  nor  will 
you  ever  be.  When  I  asked  you  whether 
America  was  dreadful  you  felt  a  swift  shame 
at  having  insinuated  as  much.  You  are  still 
patriotic." 

"  Perhaps,"  I  murmured. 

"  Yet  patriotism  is  just  one  of  our  innu- 
merable prejudices.  In  a  way,  I  confess  to 
finding  it  admirable.  I  envy  the  ability  of 
a  man  to  hate  passionately  and  inclusively  a 
whole  race,  simply  because  he  does  not  be- 
long to  it.  I  envy,  because  such  a  hatred 
reveals  an  intensity  of  feeling  of  which  I  am 
incapable.  I  envy,  because  I  cannot  under- 
stand.   People  are  so  pitifully  alike  [se  res- 

[  271  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

semblent  si  tristement\"  said  Anatole  France 
wearily. 

"  It  is  strange,"  he  went  on,  "  that  patriot- 
ism should  be  so  hard  to  shake  off;  for  it  is 
one  of  the  most  obvious  prejudices.  It  is  in- 
deed no  more  than  an  expression  of  vanity, 
of  the  old  thought,  '  What 's  mine  is  better 
than  what 's  yours  ! '  " 

"  Perhaps  that  itself  is  the  reason,"  I  sug- 
gested.  "Is  not  vanity  very  important?" 

"True,"  he  assented.  "Not  vanity  but 
selfishness,  of  which  vanity  is  a  corollary. 
Selfishness  is  at  the  root  of  every  creative 
impulse.  Without  it  the  world  would  stop 
—  or  that  little  scum  on  the  face  of  the 
world,  that  senseless  activity,  we  call  life." 

"  Uespece  de  corruption  que  nous  appelons 
la  vie  organique"  I  quoted  swiftly. 

"  I  am  flattered  that  you  remember  so 
well,"  he  observed.  "  Ambition,  inspiration, 
love, —  they  are  all  forms  of  selfishness  — 
love  more  than  the  rest,  as  it  is  the  most  in- 
tensely creative." 

[  272  ] 


An  Interview 

"But,"  I  asked,  "if  patriotism  is  only- 
vanity,  why  is  it  held  to  be  something  high 
and  noble?" 

"  At  all  times,"  he  replied,  "  men's  vanity 
has  made  them  contemplate  incredulously 
their  own  futility,  and  led  them  to  imagine 
themselves  the  tools  of  some  higher  force. 
With  this  premise  selfishness  was  no  longer 
a  conceivable  motive.  It  does  no  harm  for 
the  philosopher  to  recognize  that  God  is 
on  the  side  of  the  greater  numbers,  but 
the  common  soldier  must  think  differently. 
No  war  of  aggrandizement,  or  of  selfish 
interest,  has  ever  been  successfully  waged 
without  a  noble  catch-word.  *  God  and  My 
Right '  was  the  slogan  of  Henry  V  as  he 
laid  waste  France;  the  Germans  sang  'Em' 
Feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott,'  in  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War,  which  was  brought  on  by  a 
forged  telegram ;  and  a  poetess  of  your  own 
country,  I  am  told,  has  in  a  popular  hymn 
made  the  armies  of  the  North  in  your  late 
war  suggest  that  as   Christ  *  died  to  make 

[  273  1 


"The  Book  of  Paris 

men  holy,'  they  would  *  die  to  make  men 
free/  " 

The  servant  had  been  waiting  a  long  time. 
Anatole  France  took  my  hand. 

"  Your  visit  has  given  me  a  real  pleasure," 
he  said  kindly.  "  I  hope  you  will  believe 


me. 


"  I  must  because  I  want  so  much  to,"  I 
answered  wistfully. 

Then,  when  I  was  almost  at  the  door, 
"You  will  go  back  sooner  or  later  to  your 
own  country,"  he  added,  "  but  do  not  feel 
badly.  You  will  never  quite  become  part  of 
it.  Even  from  a  captive  balloon  one  has 
a  wider,  less  biased  view  than  from  the 
ground." 

I  drifted  out  of  the  house  in  a  dream. 
Anatole  France  had  said  that  my  visit  had 
given  him  pleasure.  Anatole  France  had 
talked  with  me  as  with  an  equal.  And,  in- 
deed, reflecting  on  the  interview,  I  was  not 
displeased  with  myself.  That  speech  on 
friendship  and  acquaintanceship  had  held 

[  274  ] 


On  Boulevard  Sebastopol 


An  Interview 

ideas.  The  memory  of  the  mocking  little 
smile  that  had  played  around  one  corner  of 
the  great  man's  mouth  from  time  to  time 
barely  troubled  me.  It  was  for  others  that 
his  face  had  taken  those  lines;  me  he  had 
not  laughed  at,  I  was  sure. 

But,  in  considering  myself,  which  I  have 
always  done  rather  closely  (with  an  intense, 
if  amused,  interest  which  my  growing  con- 
viction that  what  I  see  there  is  rarely  unique 
keeps  from  becoming  fatuous),  I  am  contin- 
ually amazed  at  the  abrupt  changes  in  my 
moods.  Thus  I  had  barely  reached  the  Ave- 
nue du  Bois  before  my  exhilaration  left  me 
like  a  fog  that,  suddenly  lifting,  lays  bare 
the  barren  country  beneath.  I  had  seen  Ana- 
tole  France  and  heard  him  speak,  and  my 
sole  concern  was  for  what  I  had  said,  for 
the  impression  I  had  made.  I  had  been  given 
such  an  opportunity  as  would  not  come  to 
one  American  out  of  ten  thousand,  and  I 
had  squandered  it.  I  had  had  an  hour  with 
Anatole  France,  and  I  had  spent  it  in  trying 

[  275  ] 


The  Book  of  Paris 

to  show  him  that  he  might  talk  to  me  with- 
out stooping.  Moreover,  it  was  clear  to  me 
at  present  that  this  too  had  been  at  the  root 
of  my  desire  to  meet  my  hero.  I  understood 
the  twisted  smile  now,  and  was  swept  with 
humiliation.  Then,  effacing  this  petty  shame 
with  a  profounder  regret,  came  the  thought 
of  what  I  might  have  learned  if  I  had  not 
been  preoccupied  with  myself.  I  had  been 
unworthy  of  my  riches ;  they  had  been,  I 
muttered,  as  pearls  before  —  But  I  would 
not  finish  the  quotation.  The  word  was  too 
offensive  in  French,  and  I  was  still  thinking 
in  French.  I  had  indeed  seldom  felt  more 
French  than  now,  when  I  knew  so  well  that 
I  should  some  day  go  back  to  America.  And, 
after  all,  whatever  I  had  missed,  my  hour 
with  Anatole  France  had  been  splendid. 
(You  will  know  without  needing  to  be  told 
that,  having  reached  the  end  of  the  avenue, 
I  was  gazing  up  now  at  the  Arc  de  Tri- 
omphe,  if,  like  me,  you  too  have  stood  be- 
fore it  and  felt  your  own  inner  bickerings 

[  276  ] 


Cafes 


An  Interview 

stilled  by  its  white  solemnity.)  But  the  re- 
gret, though  less  acute,  remained.  There 
were  so  many  things  I  might  have  learned ! 
Why  had  I  not  at  least  asked  — 

The  bell  in  a  nearby  church  boomed  two, 
and  I  started  up  in  my  chair  with  a  smile. 
When  one  looks  into  the  fire  it  is  as  though 
time  were  passing ;  dreams  are  almost  as  real 
as  events.  It  was  still  November.  My  letter 
to  Anatole  France  was  on  the  table  at  my 
hand.  I  picked  it  up,  laid  it  on  the  coals, 
and  watched  it  as  it  curled  inward,  turned 
black,  and  burst  into  sudden  flame. 


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U    .    S    .    A 


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